


Baker Street: Part XIII

by Cerdic519



Series: Elementary 366 [28]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV), Percy Jackson and the Olympians - Rick Riordan, Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms, Sherlock Holmes - Arthur Conan Doyle, Taxi (TV)
Genre: 221B Baker Street, Ancient History, Art, Bets & Wagers, Books, Codes & Ciphers, Cuddling & Snuggling, England (Country), Exhaustion, F/M, Fan-fiction, Forgery, Gay Sex, Gretna Green, Heroism, Inheritance, Johnlock - Freeform, Justice, London, Love, M/M, Marriage, Matchmaking, Middlesex, Minor Character Death, Murder, Numismatics, Olympics, Omens & Portents, Politics, Religion, Romance, Saints, Scotland, Secretaries, Servants, Taxis, Trains, Treasure Hunting, Victorian, Warwickshire, Worcestershire, essex, radiation, suffolk - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-26
Updated: 2020-10-10
Packaged: 2021-03-07 16:07:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 19
Words: 51,906
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26650393
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cerdic519/pseuds/Cerdic519
Summary: The Complete Cases Of Sherlock Holmes And John Watson. All 366 cases plus assorted interludes, hiatuses, codas &c.1899-1900. A short but important period in the careers of the dynamic duo as having averted the end of the world (as you do), Sherlock recovers from his carelessness in hurting his beloved John and encounters questionable bequests, crooked gamblers, helpful saints, unhelpful sailors, prejudiced professors, harassed hairdressers, jumping journalists, turbulent priests, unusual cab-drivers, Spartan behemoths and an attempt to destroy a close friend. Plus there is one of the two most famous previously unpublished cases, the Abernetty Affair or why the parsley sank so low into the butter. And then a kind act of the great detective repays itself with a chance to truly make his beloved a very happy man in the wee small hours of the morning (no, not that way!).
Relationships: Bronn/Arthur Dayne/Jaime Lannister, Sherlock Holmes/John Watson, Tobias Gregson & Lestrade
Series: Elementary 366 [28]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1555741
Kudos: 7





	1. Contents

**Author's Note:**

  * For [bookworm4ever81](https://archiveofourown.org/users/bookworm4ever81/gifts), [lyster99](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lyster99/gifts).



** 1899 **

**Interlude: 'Tis The Season**  
by Lady Aelfrida Holmes  
_Lady Holmes marks the festive season, and her eldest son drinks_

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** 1900 **

**Case 289: The Adventure Of Saint Jurmin's Legacy**  
by Doctor John Watson, M.D.  
_Supernatural goings-on in West Suffolk – which is just as well_

**Case 290: The Adventure Of The Prejudiced Professor**  
by Mr. Sherlock Holmes, Esquire  
_Those in positions of authority can abuse them – until Sherlock_

**Case 291: The Adventure Of The Six Napoleons**  
by Doctor John Watson, M.D.  
_A treasure-hunt – but Sherlock's client is in for a shock_

**Interlude: From A Land Down Under**  
by Doctor John Watson, M.D.  
_The detective goes a long way for his friends_  


**Case 292: The Adventure Of The Sleepless Policeman ☼**  
by Chief-Inspector Tobias Gregson  
_A journalist goes a bit too far when he upsets a certain policeman_

**Case 293: The Adventure Of The Conk-Singleton Forgeries**  
by Doctor John Watson, M.D.  
_Sherlock solves a case where a friend did not ask for help_

**Case 294: The Adventure Of The Zinc Filings**  
by Doctor John Watson, M.D.  
_Diplomatic shenanigans and a disturbed sailor in the East End_

**Interlude: Weekend Work**  
by Miss Katherine Howell  
_Even the most unpleasant jobs have their good days_

**Case 295: The Seven Dials Mystery ☼**  
by Doctor John Watson, M.D.  
_Sherlock's and John's hairdresser has an Italian complication_

**Case 296: The Adventure Of The Evened Odds**  
by Mr. Sherlock Holmes, Esquire  
_An athlete is in danger of severe injury unless Sherlock can help_

**Case 297: The Adventure Of The Dashing Hero**  
by Doctor John Watson, M.D.  
_The famous Abernetty case (the parsley in the butter)_

**Case 298: The Adventure Of The Curious Cab-driver**  
by Mr. Sherlock Holmes, Esquire  
_A lady cab-driver asks Sherlock about some unlikely occurrences_

**Interlude: Sonnet 38**  
by Mr. Laurence Trevelyan, Esquire  
_Lowen gets inculcated with Shakespeare – twice!_

**Case 299: The Adventure Of The Park-Attendant ☼**  
by Doctor John Watson, M.D.  
_Sherlock helps out another lowly friend who is being bullied_

**Case 300: A Spartan Adventure ☼**  
by Mr. Sherlock Holmes, Esquire  
_Who is looking into the windows of Sweyn Godfreyson's molly-houses?_

**Case 301: Murder Over The Border**  
by Doctor John Watson, M.D.  
_A most cunning murder – and there is no body!_

**Interlude: The Anvil Chorus**  
by Doctor John Watson, M.D.  
_John is about to have the ultimate in Moments_

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	2. Interlude: 'Tis The Season

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 1899\. Some gifts cannot be exchanged for something better, or at least something less worse.

_[Narration by Lady Aelfrida Holmes]_

One of the many wonderful things about my sweet little Sherry-werry and that scrummy doctor of his is that they are such wonderful people. For example, that story I wrote about them taking a trip to the opera and securing a private box for.... reasons. Dear Sherlock said that I really should not have gone to all that trouble, but I knew from his blush that he and his friend.... yes.

I would have tried it out on Eddie but the poor dear's deafness is back again, and that clever Doctor Greenwood (sadly, married with a large family) says that at his age any great strain would be inadvisable. But as I said to Mycroft when he came round again the other day, my husband gets that every night anyway. I do not know why he pulled that strange face, especially as I graciously allowed him to stay and hear 'Cabbages And Kings', about a monarch who decides to get down and dirty with his well-endowed team of royal gardeners. I had been working on it on and off for a year now, and finally it was done. Like the monarch, really.

To cap it all that idiotic ex-son of mine has been causing issues. I had hoped even someone as mentally detached as Torver might have gotten the message about my not being happy with him, but from his latest actions, apparently he had not. Maybe it was time for a Level Ten; I had not had one of those for far too long.

It was also unfortunate that Sherlock and his friend had to spend two whole months on some matter up in the North somewhere, because I also had a short seasonal special 'White Christmas' which I managed to get done in time for the great day. Set in Mr. Godfreyson's establishments but when Campbell was still in charge – my stepson dropped by the other day with some more inspirational ideas, although him wearing the kilt was inspiration enough! – it has an huge advent calendar with a sex toy behind each door and a lot of clients who would be in a rather pitiful state come Boxing Day. But as I said to Mycroft when I told him that he would be editing both it and 'Cabbages' for me – he is round here often enough, trying to get back into my good books after Rachael quite rightly dumped him – one can never have enough great works of art.

I have noticed that he seems to be drinking rather more of late. I wonder why.

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	3. Case 289: The Adventure Of Saint Jurmin's Legacy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 1900\. Rural West Suffolk is the setting for a theft and possible murder in which Sherlock is called upon to solve another cold case that has suddenly become hot. Glowing, in fact.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Mentioned also as the case of the ancient British barrow.

_[Narration by Doctor John Watson, M.D.]_

Foreword: Pitchblende derives its name from pitch as in the dark substance distilled from certain tars, and an old German word _blende_ meaning to deceive, as it was a metal whose mining often proved unprofitable. I am informed that nowadays the term is for some reason being replaced by the ghastly 'uraninite' (which to me sounds more like a medical purgative). Scientists these days!

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Sherlock and I rarely disagreed – it was hardly worth my while as I knew full well that he would win any argument if only because he would make sure that I enjoyed losing it – but one of the few points of contention between us was over his definition of what constituted a 'failed' case. This is a matter over which I have had some questions from my loyal readership in that I was oftentimes asked why I did not publish any such cases. As I have said before Sherlock viewed several of the cases that I did document as failures, something that I strongly disagreed with him over. For example in the Adventure Of The Solitary Cyclist, knowledge of his advent had prompted the husband in the case to bring forward the murder of his wife, something that my friend could not have prevented yet blamed himself for even if he did go on to secure justice against the villain.

In this particular case the great detective (again wrongly, in my humble opinion) regarded this as one of his failed cases. A battle fought in the seventh century, an act of thievery in the thirteenth and some floor repair work in the seventeenth all combined with what seemed impossible yet was right before our eyes. I still doubted much of the supernatural but in this case it rather effectively proved its existence – and at the end we both had good cause to be more than grateful.

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This was to be the first of two recorded ventures into the county of Suffolk which at the boundary changes effected in the 1880s had been divided administratively into West and East (curiously considering how rare genuine supernatural happenings were over all our cases, both these qualified as such). It was to West Suffolk that we headed on this occasion, the south-western part of the ancient Kingdom of East Anglia which fact I mention for reasons that will become clear later. The county town was Bury St. Edmund's which Sherlock had promised that we would visit once the case was settled; in fact the case itself would ultimately take us there. I was pleased at that, our having just returned from magnificent Durham and the strange case of the Millennium Falcon, and Sherlock having allowed me some sight-seeing time in the ancient Wearside citadel.

I had certainly paid for that generosity all the way back to London Town. Just who had ordered the platforms at King's Cross to be extended that much?

Our destination for this adventure was the small village of Bury St. Germaine which lay about three miles east of the county town. That meant a long journey on the Great Eastern Railway, first an express to Ipswich and then a much slower train that chuntered its unhurried way through some pleasant countryside until it reached Flexworth Halt. The hamlet of Flexworth was in fact even smaller than our destination, but it was customary for railway companies to shun using similar names (i.e. two 'Burys') on nearby stations to avoid the sort of confusion that had been a minor factor in our recent Cornish case involving Beres and Beers. And a not-insane Portuguese duellist!

I for one was glad to be leaving London for a while, as in that first week of the New Year Sherlock had had yet more problems with his family, and I felt that a break would do him the world of good. He had learned that his disgraced brother Torver had not only somehow found a member of the female species who would marry him but worse, she was a lady who bore the Holmes name (though not any relation), a Miss Irene Holmes. One could only express pity at her terrible lack of judgement in not seeing through her new husband who, typically, took her name on marriage. If he had hoped that such a thing might bring him back into the family fold he had been swiftly disabused, and efforts to secure that end by his equally obnoxious brother Mycroft had not helped matters. Sherlock had told me that his mother had, on hearing what her ex-son had done, only narrowly been persuaded not to hunt him down with a shotgun (I had very generously offered to supply the bullets which despite the sharp look I got had I felt had been most generous of me; bullets were not cheap!). Also, perhaps typically, Torver's attempted rehabilitation had been assisted by a certain tiresome lounge-lizard who had made it into the last year of the nineteenth century despite my prayers. The fact that Mr. Randall Holmes had also lied to Sherlock about a case to inveigle him into a family visit – my poor man looked drained by it all. 

Sherlock generally had one of two reactions to this sort of annoyance; either to go into sexual overdrive (of the sort that made my sitting down the next day intensely yet wonderfully painful) or to demand lots of manful embracing. I had once held the belief that manly men did not... manfully embrace each other without good cause but I would have done so much more for the man I loved, as we lay together like the old married couple that we seemed to rapidly be turning into. Fortunately this recent unpleasantness had led to the former reaction as my aching backside could readily attest to. As did the humongous love-bite that was currently rubbing against my collar at every bump and jolt of the train.

I was so damn lucky! Although thank the Lord for padded seats in first-class. Now if only we did not have to stop so suddenly and so damn often! And every time I yelped in pain it elicited a knowing smirk from someone opposite!

I still loved him, though.

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Flexworth Halt turned out to be a perfect little English country station in some even more beautiful Suffolk countryside, with our contact in Bury the local vicar waiting to meet us. The Reverend Thomas Stuart's interest was archaeology and I presumed that he must have been both excited and disturbed by what he had come across in his own church literally right beneath where he preached every Sabbath. He was a short, round-faced and dark-haired man in his early fifties and clearly passionate about both his work and his hobby.

“I should start by telling you about the history of the area”, he said once we were sat down in the vicarage, and Sherlock's eyes had lit up at the sight of coffee. “I have a feeling that it relates in some way to what has come out of our sacred ground.”

Sherlock had already downed his drink in one go to the vicar's evident surprise. He poured him another before continuing, smiling slightly as he did so. One slightly re-caffeinated consulting detective looked suspiciously at me but I knew full well that any smirk would have had some painful consequences later for my still-aching backside.

I really should have smirked!

“Jurmin, to give him his name as it was in his own seventh century, was the only son of the Christian King Anna of the East Angles”, the vicar began. “Unfortunately for him he lived at a time when the pagan kingdom of Mercia next door was getting ever stronger. He and his father were defeated at the Battle of Bulcamp near Blythburgh on the coast some time around the year 653. Jurmin died in the battle and was buried at the nearby priory. Anna was replaced by his brother Ethelhere who was pretty much a Mercian puppet ruler and East Anglia was never strong again. Jurmin became a saint as did all his sisters, one of whom was the famous St. Etheldreda.”

I nodded. I remember learning about that 'St. Audrey' at school and how decorated braids sold at local fairs were named after her, later (and rather unfairly I always thought) devolving into the modern word 'tawdry'.

“We know that Jurmin came here and prayed before going to his last battle”, the vicar said. “The village was presumably part of his own lands; it is rather out of the way otherwise. People tend to forget that the English did not become Christian overnight. He found that paganism was still going on and in particular the local people worshipped around an ancient British barrow. That form of pagan worship was quite unusual for those times and we do not know why it took hold here and nowhere else in the area, although I understand that it is common across some parts of Wessex. Jurmin intended that his bones rest here when he died but although a church was indeed built on his orders, Blythburgh most unfairly refused to surrender his bones, although they were later moved to Bury St. Edmund's just up the road.”

“Are you saying that you think you have found those bones?” I asked. He shook his head.

“I do not think so”, he said. “The area was next afflicted by events surrounding the Battle of Lincoln in 1217 and it was claimed that the body of the much more famous St. Edmund was taken away to France, Toulouse to be exact. At around the same time the abbey stopped claiming to have Saint Jurmin's remains, although what happened to them we do not know. Like elsewhere the abbey was destroyed by King Henry the Eighth and all its records were lost.”

“So what have you found?” Sherlock asked. The vicar frowned.

“I am not sure”, he said. “What I can say is that it is a dead body, it is at least several centuries old, and it was entombed in the old barrow. Horrible to say, there were scratch marks on some of the stones.”

I thought of some medieval baron sealing a faithless wife in a room, his men bricking it up as she screamed for mercy. I shuddered and instinctively moved closer to Sherlock. He was radiating his usual reassuring warmth and I felt a little better.

“Ours is but a small church”, the vicar went on, “as you have seen. Last year we had problems with the roof which was threatening to give way along one side; you remember how bad the winter was. The problem turned out to be due to the two great vertical beams on that side of the church, both of which were found to be in very poor condition. We had to remove that side of the roof completely then take out and replace the supports, and that was when we found it. There was a second stone floor underneath the main one, which had started to give way underneath the column bases. The pillars were resting on the lower floor and set in that was a stone trap-door leading down to the old barrow. The upper floor had been laid right across it, but only on that side of the church, not all through. It took three men to break through it and underneath in the barrow was where we found the body.”

“A _second_ floor?” Sherlock asked, clearly as puzzled as I was by such a thing. “Do you know how old it is?” 

“That is the odd thing”, he said. “We found the remains of a New Testament down there that was dated to the English Civil War. The archaeologist that we called in said that the stonework of the second floor was most certainly from that same period, which was what I myself had thought although I am not an expert. But the remains of the clothing, few as they were, seem to be rather older than Stuart times. Then there was the box.”

I think that we were both a little lost by this point. And I actually liked history!

“We did not see it at first”, the vicar said. “Either there had been a roof-fall or the dead man had tried to cover it up for some reason. Quite ornate; I would have said that it was Byzantine and probably either seventh or eighth century, in other words around Jurmin's time. Despite it being called the Dark Ages there was considerable trade with the Mediterranean back then, so such a thing is not implausible. The box is about two foot square and a foot high. We also know that that part of the church was rebuilt around the time of the Civil War, so it is possible that they may have discovered the body and then thrown the Bible in before adding an extra floor. Why they went to so much trouble, we have no idea.”

“Why would they not take the expensive box?” Sherlock mused. “I think that we need to see it. Is it to hand?”

“It is locked in my office at the back of the church”, the vicar said, rising to his feet. “We can go now if you wish.”

Sherlock looked mournfully at his coffee-cup. There was definitely some lip-quivering in there as well.

“Or perhaps we might have another coffee first?” the vicar suggested, a twinkle in his eye.

I smiled to myself. He had clearly read my stories well!

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A little later the vicar led us through the lovely old church to a heavy door at the back. 

“It is in here”, he said, pushing the door open into a cluttered office. “I left it on the table for..... oh.”

He stopped. In the afternoon sunlight through the stained glass the colours played across the room to where a large table stood. Judging from our host's crestfallen expression there should have been something on it rather than just a slightly less dusty rectangle.

“Who has access to this room?” Sherlock asked. 

“Only the verger, Mr. Quintus”, the vicar said, looking decidedly anxious. “He has the other key.”

“We must see him at once”, Sherlock said. The vicar looked even more troubled.

“That might be difficult”, he said.

“Why?” I asked.

“Because he is currently in an isolation ward at Bury Hospital, being treated for a rare form of the chickenpox”, the vicar said glumly. “He left his key with me and my dear wife insisted that I lock it in my writing-desk because she knows how forgetful I am.”

I looked around the little study and noticed one other thing. The stained-glass windows were backed with a wire mesh which, while it could probably easily have been cut through, most evidently had not. The door had shown no signs of forced entry. So how on earth had the thief gotten into this room?

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Since a theft had (somehow) taken place and it was a matter of some import, Sherlock decided that we should inform the local constable and then take him to the nearby town and the larger station there which would also enable us to see the place. I found the cathedral awe-inspiring, but felt saddened when we walked around the ruins of the old abbey. 

“All this destroyed because that villain Henry the Eighth fancied Anne Boleyn”, I sighed. “But at least we got Queen Elizabeth out of it.”

Sherlock was looking at a small plaque. I joined him and read it. 

“This was where the bones of the saints were kept”, he said quietly. “St. Edmund's principally, of course. I wonder where Saint Jurmin's remains were kept?”

The vicar who had accompanied Constable Bailey to the town station joined us at that moment and heard my question. 

“We are not sure”, he said. “I would still like to know the whereabouts of that box. I came from the room to meet you gentleman earlier and it was there then, so the thief cannot....”

He trailed off evidently distracted by something or someone. We both followed his gaze to where a tall, muscular fellow of about twenty-five years of age was kneeling some distance away, apparently lost in prayer. His flaxen, almost white hair glowed in the soft winter light, and the beatific smile on his face was, I felt, more than a little unnerving. His tall form reminded me a little of the Flaxen Saxon Lord Cholmondeley Fortescue but this fellow was definitely beefier and there was something about his expression that suggested a disconnection with the rest of the world.

“You know him?” I asked.

“That is Jerry, our local simpleton”, the vicar said, staring in astonishment. “What on earth is he doing here? He never leaves the village!”

The young man stood up, dusted himself down and made to leave but caught sight of the vicar. Smiling, he ambled over. I was reminded for some reason of one of those huge over-friendly giant dog breeds that could probably flatten people albeit with the best of intentions. 

Contrary to what some blue-eyed genius claimed later I did _not_ try to hide behind him! I was just moving to get out of the sun.

“Jerry?” the vicar asked clearly confused. “What are you doing here?”

“Just checking in, vicar”, the man said cheerfully. “Saint said I should come.”

“Jerry was named for our local saint”, the vicar explained. “Um, what were you 'checking in' for, may I ask?”

“The box, vicar. Saint told me where to hide it, then come here and wait for you all.”

I did a quick mental calculation. The vicar had told us before we had sat down that he had just left the box in his room and that meeting had taken barely half an hour despite a certain someone's coffee fetish. Which in turn meant that this fellow had to have somehow gotten the box from behind a locked door without leaving any evidence of his thievery, hidden the thing somewhere and then transported himself over three miles without seeming the least bit out of breath. 

This did not even begin to add up.

“Where did you hide it, Jerry?” the vicar asked gently.

“Saint said not to tell anyone that, sir”, the fellow said cheerfully. “But he said that I was to tell your two gentleman friends about the pitch.”

I stared at him in confusion although I noted that Sherlock seemed to understand. He nodded.

“You did well, Jerry”, he smiled. “Can you tell me, was the box heavy?”

The man's forehead screwed up as he thought. I could almost hear the cogs grinding against each other and someone could cut with the sharp look _now!_

“Not for me, sir”, he said at last. “You might've found it heavy, I dare say.”

“And you are all right?” Sherlock asked, which I thought a strange question. 

The fellow grinned.

“Saint said he'd protect me from that, sir”, he said. “Saint kept his word.”

“The saint is surely proud of you, Jerry”, Sherlock said. “I do not suppose that he told you anything about the box or its contents? If you cannot tell us then that is quite all right.”

The Goliath thought again.

“Saint said they left the big church when the men came from London”, he said thoughtfully. “Bad man took saint's bones, but saint stopped him at his village. Bad man opened the box, people got sick and died. They buried bad man with the box. Saint's home now, like he wanted.”

A strange smile came across his features and I felt the urge to hid.... to get out of the wind even more. 

“Would you like to ride back with us on the train, Jerry?” Sherlock asked, smiling for no good reason. The fellow shook his head.

“Saint'll get me home”, he said confidently.

Sherlock nodded and we resumed our tour of the place. I noted that when we left, Jerry was still leaning against one of the walls looking up to Heaven. Weirdly on that cloudy January day there was a single beam of light that fell squarely on him, his hair glowing almost like a halo. 

It really was cold there.

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“There was indeed a crime”, Sherlock said. “But as it happened nearly seven centuries ago, even my detective powers are strained to solve it. However there are two things of which I am absolutely certain.”

“What are those?” the vicar asked as we got into the train for the short journey back to the village.

“First”, Sherlock said, “you must tell this story to no-one; at least not for as long as Jerry is alive. I am sure that he will not speak out. Second, you must never on any account press him for the location of that box.”

“Buy why not?” the vicar asked. 

Sherlock sat back.

“You told us earlier about the Battle of Lincoln”, he said, “in that critical year of 1217 when the Plantagenet dynasty so nearly faltered. Although I am not usually disposed to believe in the supernatural, I think that in this case what Jerry told us about those far-off times was true. Saint Jurmin's bones were indeed removed from the abbey by a London baron trying to take advantage of the troubles – a crime for which he would pay with his life!”

“You will remember that one of the questions I asked Jerome was about the _weight_ of the box. You described a dark wood often used in Byzantine art, but that wood is not particularly heavy yet you yourself told us that the box was. One would normally suspect the contents of the box of causing that, but fortuitously a recent scientific advance leads me to suspect otherwise and perhaps to prove Jerry's words all too true.”

“Last year there was a study concerning the strange properties of certain chemicals which seem somehow capable of changing without any external input; they are said to emit a form of energy when so doing. One such substance is known to be present in small amounts not far from this district. It is called pitchblende.”

 _That was what the fellow had meant when he talked about 'pitch',_ I thought.

“So where does that leave us?” Sherlock said. “Let us assume that not long before the bones were taken, the monks at the abbey came across some of this material. We know that it has the power to make people sick and even die in some instances. The monks faced a quandary; how to get rid of it without innocent people suffering? I cannot but wonder if, given the facts, their solution was to 'call in the reserve'. We know that the reliquaries of saints were oftentimes kept in lead-lined boxes, and fortunately for all Saint Jurmin was one such. They placed the pitchblende in his reliquary, your Byzantine box, vicar, and it worked. By chance or divine help they had discovered a way to stop or at least inhibit the poisoning.”

“So the box was safe then?” the vicar asked. Sherlock shook his head.

“One presumes that trial and error showed them that the only danger was closeness”, he said. “The lead only slowed the poison's escape; it did not stop it so anyone who held the box close to them ran the risk of infection. Hence when in 1217 a greedy baron decided to add to his haul of saintly bones, the saint wrought a swift vengeance on him. When he reached your village, he must have felt ill and opened it thus causing the sudden spate of deaths. That I must admit is the the first of several things that I do not understand at all.”

“Why he opened it?” I asked. Sherlock shook his head.

 _”How_ he opened it”, he said. “The monks would surely have thrown the key away having neither the need nor the desire to ever re-open the box. You yourself vicar told us that the box had not been forced, yet somehow that baron was able to open it. As a result the villagers started dying and they linked their misfortune with the newcomer, correctly in this instance. He was overpowered and buried with the box – you will note under a stone floor. One may presume that the villagers saw the lead lining and decided to add their own layer of protection, as well as placing it in the holiest place around.”

“And the Bible?” I asked.

“The cellar must have been inadvertently discovered during the renovations to the church during the English Civil War, and possibly more deaths ensued”, Sherlock said. “The people of the time wisely re-sealed it, throwing in God's word as an added protection from their own age and a second stone floor for good measure. Bearing in mind that that around a thousand years after it was first closed, the fact that it was still causing deaths is quite worrisome.”

He took a breath, frowning.

“The second curiosity is how your village simpleton got through a locked door and obtained it while leaving no evidence of his thievery”, he said, “and the third as to how he was unaffected by its contents for he would have to have held it while transporting it. As I said, I am not predisposed to believe in the supernatural but in this instance the evidence seems to support that as the only explanation, if only on the grounds that having eliminated every other possibility then the remaining one, however improbable, much be the truth.”

The train drew to a halt at Flexworth where the vicar had arranged for his carriage to come and meet us. But as we drove back up to the vicarage I saw something that made my hair stand on end. Jerry, large as life, cutting the grass in the churchyard and clearly some way into his task as it had all been longer earlier. How in God's name had he got back here before us? And once again, in a cloud-filled sky there was a single ray of light illuminating him.

I looked skywards and gulped.

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Our supernatural case was not quite over. At Ipswich we boarded the express to London, and as we drew near the capital I noted that Sherlock seemed to be growing more thoughtful, presumably fretting over his awful family. So when I asked if there was anything I could do to help I suppose that I was effectively asking to end up being forced against the door-frame as he thrust into me with that sort of savage abandon that, I knew, would have him needlessly apologizing later on.

We were both so intent on our coupling that neither of us noticed that the train had drawn to a halt in Liverpool Street Station. He was still thrusting lazily into me when a shadow loomed against the blind that I had pulled down on the platform side and a man's voice could be heard outside.

“Look Ned, this will be the next express out and I am not waiting on a cold platform when I can have a nice warm carriage.”

I stared across in horror. We had forgotten to jam the door and we were across the carriage from it! This was terri....

There was a mild curse from outside.

“Locked, damnation!” an exasperated voice said. “But someone's coming out of the next one. We'll take that.”

We both frantically pulled ourselves together even though I was sure that I, at least, looked like someone who had been thoroughly (and most satisfyingly) ravished on a train.

“I did not see you lock the door”, I said curiously, pressing back the small lever that should have opened it to reveal our debauched selves to the world.

It opened immediately. We both stared at each other.

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Postscriptum: Any doubts about someone watching over Mr. Jerome Wuffing and his own were dispelled by events subsequent to this story. Later that year the 'simpleton' left his village and enrolled at Cambridge University, where his brilliant brain advanced the physical sciences considerably. He married the daughter of one of his fellow professors and they proceeded to have some seventeen children, consisting of a frankly incredible seven sets of twins and one set of triplets. He retired when his wife died in 1935 and disappeared into the wilds of western Canada, his last two requests being that no-one attempt to follow him and that I publish this tale. I am honoured so to do.

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	4. Case 290: The Adventure Of The Prejudiced Professor

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 1900\. A quiet student approaches Mr. Sherlock Holmes with an odd little problem; they keep getting low marks from one of their professors. The answer, as so often, lies in past misdeeds leading to present ones.

_[Narration by Mr. Sherlock Holmes, Esquire]_

It was still a cold and bitter January, as if the last year of the old century was determined to start out as memorably as possible. John had been busier than usual as a result, and he had become increasingly short-tempered with his richer and fussier patients who called him out because of a runny nose or a sprained ankle while those at the other end of the social scale might be dying of cold and need his services as a matter of life and death. There may or may not have been a few more chocolate desserts and cakes than was the norm around that time (fortunately he quickly worked them off with my 'help') but there was absolutely none of the Thing That Started With The Third Letter Of The Alphabet And Rhymed With Huddling. Even if there may have been an increased amount of manly embracing.

Our next case arose out of a bespectacled young gentleman who visited Baker Street on a day when there was a snowstorm to add to our woes. Fortunately it was also a rare day off from the surgery for John, if only because I had once again had to have Words with their abusing his good nature. 

I did not have to have my wide knowledge of human nature to know that our visitor was both nervous and unhappy, let alone the fact that he sat down, fiddled with his spectacles and stared at us nervously.

“We may be able to help you”, I said carefully, “but even Mr. Sherlock Holmes needs at least _some_ information before he helps a struggling and very worried student down from the Midlands for the day.”

Our visitor blinked in shock.

“You have a pale green and rather worn railway ticket in your hand”, I said. “Presumably you would not have walked all the way from Paddington with it still in your hand, so you fidgeted with it while your card was being sent up, hence you are both worried and also financially straitened otherwise you would have taken a cab and avoided the 'shower' that has been going on for nearly an hour now. That colour of ticket is unique to trains on the Great Western line to Birmingham, and that suggests either prudence and/or financial straits as you could have been here faster by taking the London & North Western line into Euston. The latter is inferred by the fact you are very clearly a student; the wear on your fingers denotes many hours spent holding a pen while you have a cheap though serviceable pair of spectacles.”

He took a deep breath and finally spoke.

“My name is Edred Hawkins”, he said. “I do indeed attend Birmingham University and live in a place called Himley, some miles west of the city.”

“Are you General Hawkins's son?” John asked. “I know that he comes from Staffordshire.”

Our visitor blushed.

“I am the middle of his three sons”, he said. “My elder brother Edgar married recently and has been blessed with a son already, and my younger brother Edward is engaged to a girl from Bridgnorth, which lies not far west of us but in Shropshire. Both wish to follow Father into the military but I do not.”

 _And therein lies at least part of the problem_ , I thought.

“Pray continue”, I said.

“I am studying medicine at the University”, the young fellow said, “and Father and I have already had a disagreement as he wanted me to become an army doctor. But anything to do with guns terrifies me and I refused. I think that he did not wish to fund my University course but Mother told him that he had to. My first year was wonderful – but at the start of my second I ran full-tilt into Mistress Caulke.”

 _“Mistress?”_ I asked, raising an eyebrow.

“She says that 'Miss' is old-fashioned and that she will never marry”, the young fellow said, “for which the gentlemen of the West Midlands should in my opinion be making extra donations in church! Unfortunately one condition that Father insisted on for my attending the place was that I take a parallel general studies course which I have to pass. I had not thought that that would be a problem but the two essays that I have submitted to Mistress Caulke so far were both failed.”

I looked at him carefully.

“Do you still have those essays?” I asked.

“They are in my rooms at college”, he said. “With Father being the way that he is I live in Monday to Friday and go home most weekends. Fortunately he is often out with his army friends then so we rarely meet. But if I fail this course I will have to quit my medical one.”

“I would like you to forward those essays to me by registered post as soon as possible”, I said. “I can arrange to get them assessed anonymously by certain professors to see what they think of them.”

“You see”, he said leaning forward, “I think that it is because of my name.”

We both stared at him in confusion.

“This woman does not like people called Edred?” John asked.

Our visitor smiled and shook his head.

“Mistress Caulke has a bee in her bonnet about men”, he said, “incredible though that sounds. She believes – she has only told us this about a hundred times – that since women were denied posts in the past, it is only fair for men to be denied things these days. How can anyone support equality when she clearly wants anything but? And she also has a bee in her bonnet about the slave trade which she goes on about _ad infinitum_. My family has only the most distant connections to the great Elizabethan explorer but she hates me in particular because of it.”

“She sounds a rather unpleasant personage”, I said. “If we are to do anything about her then we must persuade the college to co-operate, and that they will only do if they know that there is wrongful activity on her part. If you forward me those essays as soon as you get home sir, I will have them assessed to see if she is indeed discriminating against you. Then we can go from there.”

“Is there anything that can actually be done, do you think?” he asked.

“There is”, I said. “When is your next essay due in, may I ask?”

“Two weeks from now”, he said. “It is almost done; I do not like to leave things to the last minute unlike so many of my colleagues.”

““We shall move well before then”, I promised him. “Be of good cheer, sir. We shall take this case.”

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“I have a solution.”

I looked across at Miss St. Leger, who had just finished off the jam cream finger that had just happened to have been on her side of the cake-stand. She was almost as bad as our friends Gregson and LeStrade, who incredibly had visited London last month on one of Mrs. Rockland's baking-days and, I had noted, been more than comfortable inside each other's personal space even though they had blushed when they had realized just how close that had been sitting to each other. LeStrade had nearly fallen off the end of the couch in his sudden eagerness for distance!

“To the problem of Mistress Caulke?” I asked.

“Yes”, she said. “But I doubt that you will allow me to shoot her on the grounds of benefiting Mankind, so more indirect methods will have to do.”

“You sound as if you knew of her already?” I asked. She nodded.

“She made headlines when she was appointed”, she said. "I am all for us ladies getting good jobs, but a friend of mine works for a company that supplies the University and he has heard rumours about her. She is all sweetness and light to those above her in the food-chain, then the devil incarnate once she is let loose on the students – or at least the male students. The only good thing is that she is not a 'Mrs. Robinson'.”

I winced at the reminder of that particular horror of Mother's. She was currently working on the saga of a teenage newspaper boy who delivered rather more than just newspapers to the ladies along his route as a result of which he was always left exhausted every day, 'Hill Street Blues'.

“What do you suggest?” I asked. She grinned evilly.

“Let her show her true colours!”

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Mr. Hawkins had his essays reach me the very next day and I subsequently had them assessed by five professors who I knew specialized in the subject. All five said that the essays were well-written and three said that the first was bordering on earning a distinction in their opinion. They were kind enough to put their findings into writing so with that John and I set off for Birmingham the following Monday.

The university was, I thought, a rather grim building, designed by someone who had clearly had shares in a brick company and had wanted to make the most of the opportunity. Mistress Caulke was teaching Mr. Hawkins' class the session before lunch and I fully intended to be there to witness it. The day-to-day running of the institution fell to the chancellor, a Mr. Corbett Newman and we had an appointment with him not long before what would be one of a certain professor's more memorable classes. If I had anything to do with it. 

Mr. Newman welcomed us and asked why we were here.

“I was undertaking an investigation into another matter”, I said, “which of course I cannot divulge as it concerns certain sensitive diplomatic elements, when I became aware of something odd happening at this institution. One of your professors was deliberately marking down a student not because his work was inferior but because she disapproved of his ancestry and, even stranger, of the fact that he was a man. As both a man and someone whose own forebears are of varying quality I took an interest, and found that this was indeed the case.”

The chancellor looked at me dubiously.

“You have evidence for this?” he asked.

I handed him the summary sheet.

“Mistress Melicent Caulke marked two essays of one of her students as failed”, I said. “I looked through them myself and thought them excellent, but history is a weak area of mine so I sent them to five professors that I know in London. I should add that they only knew that I wanted an honest opinion on them, not whether I wanted good or ill. All five passed both essays easily and three said that they considered the first one particularly good.”

“I am sure that that lady would never discriminate against a student”, the chancellor said firmly. 

I looked hard at him. He visibly quailed.

“It is right and proper that women should be given the same opportunities as men in as many fields as possible”, I said slowly. “Teaching is one such. However, when this scandal reaches the newspapers.....”

“The newspapers?” he said, clearly horrified. I nodded.

“The evidence seems incontrovertible”, I said. “However I see that Mistress Caulke is teaching shortly, so I think that as there is a public gallery I shall sit in and observe. If I find that she is treating students the way it seems, then I have several contacts among the London newspapers. The 'Times' will surely be asking if she is only being protected because of her sex rather than any true teaching abilities.”

“I am sure that she is doing no such thing”, Mr. Newman said defensively, although I could hear the doubt in his voice. “I shall watch with you.”

“I doubt that she will do anything if she sees you there”, I said, although I could already guess his answer. I was right.

“That is not a problem”, he said. “The public gallery is fronted with some of that clever one-way glass so that neither the professors nor the students become distracted. Let us go!”

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The students were all ready when we reached the hall and sat behind what looked like smoked glass. Mistress Caulke was already at the front, a red-headed (well, her hair had been dyed some colour that had presumably meant to have been red rather than dirty plum) and frankly ugly female of about forty years of age with a sharp expression and an attitude so wide, I was amazed that she had made it through the door.

The lesson began and all went well until the woman invited questions. A young blond student raised his hand.

“I do not understand why we are not learning about all the lives lost by British sailors in eliminating the slave trade”, he said. “That has been going on for nearly a century now.”

“Shut up you silly fool!” the professor said rudely. “We do not have time for trifles.”

The student reeled back from her anger. I could feel the shock of the poor chancellor next to me, but then he had employed this harridan.

“My father served on one of those ships”, the blond student said hotly, “and my uncle died on another. He gave his life to end this evil business. _Trifles?”_

“Both liars”, the professor said dismissively. “Next?”

A tall dark-haired student rose to his feet.

“You come from America, Miss”, he said. “How come we never do anything about Americans and the slave trade, or what your people did to those poor Red Indians in those concentration camps?”

She gave him a murderous look. I was frankly glad that I was a long way away and behind a partition.

“If you ever say 'Miss' to me again you can wave goodbye to your next pass!” she said angrily. “My course, my decision.”

“But the University decides.....” the fellow began.

“You just failed your next essay!” she sneered. “Next?”

I could feel the horror emanating from the chancellor beside me. Mr. Hawkins stood up.

“I had my last two essays re-marked by _real_ professors”, he said angrily, “and they passed them both. How many other people here have failed and think they should have their work looked at by someone who actually knows what they are doing?”

A whole host of students immediately raised their hands. The only ones who did not were, I noted, the two female students. Damning.

“You vile piece of filth!” Mistress Caulke shrieked marching up to him. “You think someone as clever as _me_ should be told what to do by a whelp like _you?_ Never!”

And with that she slapped him clean across the face. I was hard put to suppress a smile; let the harridan try to talk her way out of this one!

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Mistress Melicent Caulke left the university that same day. The university agreed that in the circumstances all work previously marked by the woman should be not only reassessed but, in view of it being the institution's fault for employing her in the first place, everyone would be guaranteed a pass at least. Or, as I told the chancellor, who knew what else might come out in the newspapers?

A lot came out all right on our train back to London when John found that I had packed my teacher's cloak into his bag and that I fully intended to discipline my own errant student so that he behaved better in future. Even if he had to have a long sit-down on Platform Six of Euston Station before he could make it to what turned out to be a very painful cab ride back to Baker Street and some intense cud.... manly embracing.

“Shut up!” he whispered as I held him. I just sniggered and kissed him until he stopped pouting. Which coincidentally was exactly when the pie that I had ordered from his favourite shop near Paddington Station arrived.

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	5. Case 291: The Adventure Of The Six Napoleons

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 1900\. A dying man leaves a riddle for some students who helped him in his final days, a treasure hunt that could bring one of them great wealth – but Sherlock's involvement has somewhat mixed results for his client.

_[Narration by Doctor John Watson, M.D.]_

Even though it was not technically a new century for another twelve months, the year nineteen hundred somehow just _felt_ different. I say that not just with the benefit of hindsight; contrary to what some cynics claim today everyone knew full well that Germany under an increasingly belligerent Kaiser Wilhelm had too many areas of conflict with out Nation for war to be avoided indefinitely. In particular the recent declaration of war against us by the two small Boer republics in southern Africa (provoked, I must admit, by the actions of a government still resentful after the shock defeat that it had suffered at their hands two decades prior) had been assisted by almost open German support, let alone the Kaiser's efforts in trying to build a navy that could threaten the _Pax Britannica_. It was widely felt that only the German leader's affection for his grandmother, now in the eighty-first year of her life, held him back for now, and even she could not last forever. The nineteenth century since Trafalgar and Waterloo had been a British one but the gathering storm-clouds as we neared the twentieth were ominous indeed.

Though in a sense I had had Sherlock ever since our first memorable meeting in Oxford some twenty-six (ouch!) years ago, our recent troubles that had resulted in a death on a Kentish railway station had definitely changed something in our relationship. Sherlock seemed much more relaxed and content with life now. Sometimes now I would catch him just looking at me as if he was finding it hard to believe I was his or that he had come so close to throwing it all away. I would always blush like a teenage boy on his first crush, and he would quietly take me to the bedroom where he would show me just how much he truly loved me. And whether it was the gentle worshipping of my body that had me crying at such tenderness or the fierce love-making that had me crying for rather different reasons every time that I tried to sit down thereafter, both showed me just how loved I truly was.

After our return from our 'saintly experience' in West Suffolk, Sherlock had had a steady stream of small cases of which only the Prejudiced Professor case was the least bit interesting. I had however felt energized in my writings and had supplied the 'Strand' magazine with four stories from 'Ninety-Seven – 'The Missing Three-Quarter', 'The Abbey Grange', 'The Devil's Foot' and 'The Retired Colourman' – as well as having yet another book of collected works published. The financial security that the income generated brought me was welcome even if I knew that my beloved Sherlock would have always helped me out of any real problems in that area.

He has just made a comment about other areas that he is all too eager to 'help me out with'. He really is quite.... my notes will have to wait a while.

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The last week of January after a birthday which our landlady's niece referred to as my 'thirty-eighteenth' – which did not make it sound any better! – saw an outbreak of influenza in the capital, and I felt compelled to go to the surgery and offer my services as they were in danger of being overwhelmed (people usually had to pay for their services and quite right too or we would have been permanently inundated, but at times of city-wide diseases like this it was all hands to the pump in the name of philanthropy). I tried to persuade Sherlock to let me sleep alone at this time telling him that there was always the risk that I and therefore he might get infected but he flatly refused; his relative proneness to acquire diseases had always terrified me. Fortunately neither of us succumbed but it was in the closing days of the outbreak that our next case of interest arose.

It was fortuitously enough the first day that I was not actually needed at the surgery. I had been planning to go in anyway and then come back and do some writing if I was truly not required, but while I was getting changed Mrs. Rockland announced that we had a visitor. It was a bespectacled young lady, about twenty years of age and dressed in a plain grey smock. Her card proclaimed her to be a 'Miss Dorothea Horn'.

“Pray be seated, Miss Horn”, Sherlock smiled in welcome. “How may we be of service to you?”

“I am afraid that the case I lay before you has no drama or excitement”, she said in what was unmistakeably an American accent. “It is something of a treasure-hunt, one in which I am not even supposed to be involved.”

Sherlock looked at her expectantly.

“Where does this 'hunt' take place, pray?” he inquired.

“Langley Hall in Worcestershire”, she said. “It is in an area known as the Black Country, a group of industrial towns west of Birmingham and south of Wolverhampton. The Hall was the property of the late Mr. John Bridges who has just passed. It is only a fair-sized house but its lands are copious indeed and the estate is to be sold by auction at the start of next month.”

“This has something to do with who inherits?” I guessed.

“Not exactly”, she said. “I did not know Mr. Bridges but dear Caleb – my fiancé Mr. Caleb Blacker – was one of five students at Birmingham University who helped him sort his library before it was donated to that institution. The old gentleman had a passion for buying rare books and manuscripts, and he had wished to see his collection kept together on his death. Caleb always said that he was kind but maybe a little..... eccentric. Just how eccentric, he found out when the gentleman's will was read.”

Birmingham University again, I mused. Now thankfully minus one prejudiced professor.

“Go on”, Sherlock urged, sending me another annoying nod.

“Mr. Bridges died on the second of February and as per his instructions the will was read at his funeral on the ninth”, she said. “He had no close family members except some cousins whom he had detested and to whom he each left one farthing. Caleb said that was some sort of legal device to hinder any claims should they have tried to contest the will, although thus far none have. He – Mr. Bridges – had been a noted philanthropist so everyone had expected him to leave all that he had to charity, especially as there were several local organizations that he had supported.”

“However his will was.... well, strange to say the least. Although the organizations that I mentioned were indeed to be the main beneficiaries, he also stated that there was a valuable item in his house and that as payment for their services the five students who had helped him with the library would each be given the chance to find it, whomsoever did being allowed to keep it. Each of the five were each allotted one hour of searching time each day for the next four weeks, starting on the following day. It was all very fair and above board; they actually had to roll dice to see who went first and then their visits were on a rota so that none of them had an advantage. If no-one found it during that time then the solicitor was empowered to open a further letter revealing its location and it would be sold along with the rest of the property.”

I saw a problem at once.

“Was there no rule against one of the five bringing in outside help?” I asked.

“Only that they cannot bring anyone _physically_ into the house to search alongside them”, she said. “Marty, one of Caleb's fellow students asked Mr. Bridges's lawyer that very question. I myself have not been inside the place. But a clue may have been provided.”

I was sure that there was no hesitation before he spoke, yet I sensed a very slight change in my friend's demeanour. He had spotted something in her words.

“What was that?” he asked.

“On the twenty-third, two weeks in and exactly half-way through the time, the solicitor called them all together and said that they each were to be guaranteed something at least for their troubles”, she said. “Each of them was handed a leather pouch and were told that the contents of each were identical; Caleb showed me his and it contained six Napoleons, the French gold coins. They are worth several pounds, he thinks.”

“A strange time for a 'consolation prize'”, Sherlock mused. “One might have expected it more at the end if they had continued to have been unsuccessful in their searchings. How does your fiancé feel about your involvement of an outside agency, may I ask?” 

“He is training to be a lawyer”, she said with a smile, “so he is always keen to use a legal loophole if he can find one. But we only have twelve days left, gentlemen. Please say that you will help.”

“We will”, Sherlock said. “Indeed, once we have packed we shall take a train to Langley this very day.”

She looked surprised at having secured her goal so easily, but smiled.

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The journey to Langley Hall involved just one change, at Birmingham's Snow Hill Station. From Langley Green Junction we took a cab to Miss Horn's house, she explaining that her fiancé called on her most days after his searches. Sure enough a lanky brown-haired young fellow arrived moments later and introduced himself as Mr. Caleb Blacker. I frankly could not see what Miss Horn saw in him but then they do say that love is blind. I thought of Sherlock first thing in the morning and smiled to myself. 

Of course I then immediately caught him looking knowingly at me, and I immediately blushed like the teenage girl I far too often became in his presence. 

_How did he keep doing that?_

“Who are the other students involved in the search?” Sherlock inquired, still smiling. 

“All lawyers like me”, Mr. Blacker said airily. “Tom Prees, bookish boy but no harm in him. Arlene Banner, aptly named because she's always waving one for women's rights and such nonsense. Ronnie McDougall, a young Irish aristo but all right I suppose though he does go on about the Emerald Isle. And young Marty Arkle, the substitute.”

Sherlock and I both looked at him in confusion. Miss Horn sighed at her beau's lack of clarity.

“Edward Winslow was the fifth of the group who had assisted Mr. Bridges”, she explained. “But he fell off a ladder while cleaning a window the day before the search started.”

“Marty had a thing for Dot one time but I got there first”, Mr. Blacker grinned. “Mr. Bridges may have been a teasing bastard I will give him this; he thought of everything. The solicitor called Ned in and told him he could nominate someone to stand in for him and that fellow would get half the prize money if he found the treasure. Poor Ned; that could turn out to be one damn expensive trip, but he and Marty came from the same place out in Tennessee in the States, so they knew each other.”

Miss Horn blushed. I wondered about that ladder; it seemed to have been a quite timely accident for the potential benefit of the unseen Mr. Arkle.

“You have had two weeks to search the place”, Sherlock said, shaking his head in a way that was just annoying. “What have you tried so far?”

“What have I _not_ tried?” the fellow groaned. “That hawk of a lawyer watches us the whole time, though he also has two men on hand if we need anything heavy moved. Let me tell you, we have checked _everything!_ Arlene found a hidden passage the second week but the only thing down there was a ton of dust. I had the shift after her that day and boy, did she look a sight. It was worth her worst scowl to laugh at her for that. And now we have these damn coins; I'm sure they mean something in this game with the timing and all, but Lord alone knows what!”

Even though the pause was infinitesimal I again knew that Sherlock had seen something in his statement. Though I had no idea what. As per usual.

“May we see them, please?” he asked, sending me yet another annoying nod.

The fellow reached into his pocket and pulled out a small leather pouch, shaking out the contents onto the table. The six coins shone brightly in the early afternoon sun.

“They've each got marks on them from where they were made but they don't add up to anything”, Mr. Blacker said glumly. “The only word I could make from them is BRAMBRABB, which makes no sense at all!”

Sherlock nodded.

“May I keep these for a while?” he asked.

“Sure thing”, the young man said. “I have to be getting back to the university so I'll see you tomorrow, Dot.”

He kissed his fiancée and left.

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“Out with it!”

Sherlock looked at me in surprise. We had checked into the Navigation Inn†, a tolerable-looking tavern on the main road up to Wolverhampton with the canal from which it took its name running behind it. 

“At this time of evening?” he teased. I gave him my worst glare.

“You know what I mean!” I growled. “You were hiding something when we were at Miss Horn's and I want to know what.”

“I think that this case may be more difficult that it first appears”, he said. “Would you be able to do something for me tomorrow?”

“Of course”, I said, easily distracted (yes, as per usual!). “What?”

“Go into Birmingham and ask as to which city each of these coins was made in, plus anything else that you can find about them”, he said.

“What are you going to do?” I asked.

“I need to go to the University, check some records there and hunt out the students on the quest.” 

“How will that help Mr. Blacker find the treasure?” I asked.

“If I knew that then I would not need to go to the University, check some records there and hunt out the students on the quest”, he said wryly.

“O brave hunter, tackling those terrifying records!” I grinned. He smiled but said nothing.

It will probably be on my gravestone: 'He _Really_ Should Have Known Better!'

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I moaned into the gag, my eyes watering as Sherlock changed his angle again and thrust into me even harder.

“Your 'brave hunter' is looking for his treasure”, he ground out and his cock rubbed lightly against my prostate before pulling away, denying me the relief I craved. 

“Sherlock!” I whined though I doubt that he heard me. He tweaked both my nipples at the same time, and my cock strained at the cock-ring that he had slipped on me during the sweet nothings he had most unfairly used to distract me. I must have been a sight, but at that moment my only concern was getting release from this torture one way or another. 

I groaned as I felt Sherlock withdrew and insert the vibrator, knowing from experience that because of the angle I was currently pinioned at it would not reach where I wanted it to. I wiggled my hips uselessly and he chuckled darkly before slipping back down the bed. Then I felt his tongue rubbing along the underside of my cock and I strained hard against the cock-ring. 

“I went for a reinforced one this time, John”, he said calmly as if he was not in the middle of reducing me to a gibbering mess. “I do not think you will break it so easily, although it may well break you!”

And with that he ran his clever tongue over my cock-head, kissing it lightly before suddenly moving away from it and kissing a trail up my chest which was heaving rapidly. Then without warning he suddenly released my legs which flopped uselessly on the bed – except the suddenly changed angle meant the vibrator hit my prostate full on!

He must have somehow unlocked the cock-ring without my being aware because I promptly exploded and he jerked me off as I came all over him, the bed and the room. I wanted to say something to him about how supremely wonderful that was, how grateful I was that I had him – but I had nothing left. He quietly removed the vibrator, gave us both a quick wipe-down and settled in beside me in the bed, pulling me close to him and enveloping me in his gorgeous scent. Within seconds I was dead to the world.

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The next day brought a bitter snowstorm to the Black Country but despite some painfully uncomfortable seating on my train I made it into the city and dragged myself around every shop that looked as if it might provide information as to the coins I had in my pocket. By the time that I had arrived back at the inn I was frozen to the marrow and my mood was not helped when Sherlock came in looking not the least bit cold, which was frankly unfair. I went down for a coffee anyway and he took it from me gratefully.

“Did you find anything useful?” I asked.

“Quite a bit”, he said, downing the hot beverage in one go. “I disguised myself as a visiting professor and talked with the other four quest members. I sat in the canteen and listened to gossip. Their coffee is atrocious by the way, but the kind ladies in the canteen most generously gave me a plateful of bacon to pass the time.”

I smiled.

“Here is a list of the information that I got about the coins”, I said, passing it over. “I think that I have learned more about coinage today that I ever wanted to know!I also got the dates they were made, all in different years. The odd thing was that although two of the coins had the letter 'R' on them, one was from Orleans and the other Rome. The 'BB' ones both came from Strasbourg, the 'AA' one from Metz and the 'M' one from Toulouse. I suppose it makes sense to the French!”

“They later minted some coins in London if I recall”, Sherlock said. “But yes. That is indeed informative.”

He seemed to think for a while then smiled.

“We will go into Birmingham together tomorrow”, he said. “I have a fancy for some artwork.”

I stared at him expectantly but apparently that was it. Lord, he was annoying at times! 

But I loved him anyway.

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Thankfully Sherlock was gentle with my still recovering body and restricted himself to some very manly embracing that night. Even better there was a partial thaw and the following morning we took the train back to Snow Hill Station. Once in the city he wanted to go to a shop that sold paintings; I waited outside but he was only in there for a moment before he hurried out and almost dragged me further along the street until we were outside a second shop. I practically bounced off the door-post as I was pulled unceremoniously inside.

“May I help you gentlemen?”

A small, dapper-looking shop assistant had appeared out of nowhere as some of them are wont to do. Sherlock smiled.

“I do not honestly know”, he said. “I am representing a man looking for something and I think that this shop may have been involved in the hiding of it. I am sure that the person who paid you would have allowed my client to know of your involvement but he may not have extended that courtesy to his representative. Of course my client could come here themselves today if needed, but time is of the essence. The work would have been for the owner of Langley Hall.”

The assistant smiled.

“Mr. Bridges did say that we could reveal information to one of five people or their representatives”, he said. “However I would need to see the full name of the person that you are representing.”

Sherlock passed him a folded piece of paper which he unfolded, read and nodded. I wondered at that; why he did not just tell him Mr. Blacker's name? The assistant went round behind the counter and extracted a ledger.

“We provided Mr. Bridges with six pieces of artwork”, he said making some notes as he talked. “There are the titles of the works in question. It was his intention to give five of them one each to the five people he set on their current quest, the sixth being sold. I am afraid that I do not know which was for whom; only his lawyers have that information.”

“I understand”, Sherlock said with a smile, taking the paper from him. “Thank you, sir.”

He ushered me out of the shop and immediately hailed a cab for Snow Hill. I took the paper from him and read what was written on it:  
 _'(The) Battle of Thermopylae'_  
 _'Brutus Alone'_  
 _'(The) Gold Squadron Off Portland'_  
 _'Jeroboam And Rehoboam'_  
 _'Thunder and Lightning Over Lindisfarne'_  
 _'Yachts In Southwold Harbour'_

Well it was obvious. I wished!

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I assumed naturally enough that Sherlock had found the clue that he needed to find whatever or wherever the treasure was, but the next day he insisted on visiting the late Mr. Bridges's solicitor Mr. White and clarifying certain matters that, apparently, needed clarifying. He then spent the next two days down at the University again. I was mystified; we seemed to be running out of time and not moving forward at all.

On the final day of the quest we all met in the long gallery at Langley Hall. Even in such a large room it was crowded with the five searchers plus Mr. Winslow, Sherlock, myself, Miss Horn, and Mr. White with his two associates. 

“Thank you for all coming”, Sherlock said. “This has been a most interesting case and the outcome has not been what I expected when it all began.”

“You mean that you failed?” Miss Banner said, curling her lip. She was a tall, rangy female whom I disliked her at once, and on whom several tons of make-up had failed to make any improvement on (although a sack placed over her head and pulled tight would have worked). And worse, she had simpered at my man!

“On the contrary, I have succeeded”, Sherlock smiled. He turned to Mr. White. “If I understand the rules correctly I am allowed to touch the item provided that I am 'signed on' by you as an official helper, which we did the other day?”

“That is correct, sir”, Mr. White confirmed. 

Sherlock smiled, then walked across to the set of six paintings that I had already recognized from the list provided by the art shop. He lifted the third one, presumably '(The) Gold Squadron Off Portland' as it was of a number of old-time galleons sailing on a fairly calm sea, off the wall and came back to hand it to....

_Mr. Arkle?_

“What's going on?” Mr. Blacker demanded. “You're working for me!”

“That is incorrect”, Sherlock said dryly. “My client is Miss Horn. And when I found during my investigations that you had been having an affair with another woman despite your engagement, I decided that it would be in her best interests if you were not the one to have this.”

Miss Horn gasped and moved swiftly away from her fiancé, who had gone deathly pale.

“But this is just a modern painting, sir”, Mr. Arkle protested.

He was right; the work was very obviously a modern reproduction if a fairly decent one. Sherlock smiled. 

“I will tell you all a story”, he said. “Mr. Bridges greatly enjoys having you all around to help him catalogue his library and decides that you should have some reward – but that you will have to prove yourselves worthy of it. So he sets you a challenge. A treasure-hunt in which the treasure is exceptionally well-hidden.”

“He employs a Birmingham art-shop to find six works of art for him”, he went on, “five of which are copies of old paintings and as Mr. Arkle has correctly stated all very obviously worth very little. But the sixth is different – he has employed an artist to recreate a copy because this painting will be fitted over a canvas of a second and rather more valuable piece of art, namely a masterpiece work of a certain Mr. Rubens

All of us people stared at him in shock.

“Once I had seen the Hall I knew that there was little chance of the treasure-hunters finding something in a building that size”, he said. “So I assumed the obvious. Two of the hunters might realize this after their first day and decide to join forces so that they could cover twice the ground. Mr. White confirmed to me that of the five, three searched each room in turn starting from one or the other ends of the building, but the other two concentrated their searches on just half the building – _and a different half for each.”_

He turned to Miss Banner.

“You might care to know that the gentleman that you passed when out walking with Mr. Blacker the other evening was me”, he said sternly. “That was when I saw.....

His words were interrupted by Mr. Blacker who suddenly surged across the room at Mr. Arkle. I moved to try to stop him but his target was not the fellow student but the painting, which he slashed at with a knife that he had produced from nowhere. The rest of us dragged him away but the painting was ruined. Sherlock went to the door and returned with three burly policemen.

“Not worth much now, is it?” Mr. Blacker snarled. “Sorry Dot. It was you or the money. You came second.”

Seconds later he was on the floor, blinking in shock and feeling his rapidly reddening jaw. Apparently Miss Dorothea Horn wielded a pretty decent uppercut.

“Actually she came first”, Sherlock smiled. “Thank you for establishing your guilt beyond reasonable doubt, sir; doctor, you might just check Miss Horn's hand. Mr. Blacker, before you and your accomplice are taken away....”

I quickly checked Miss Horn but she was fine, and indeed looking more than capable of inflicting further damage to her now ex-fiancé who could not get out of her way quickly enough. Sherlock meanwhile walked back to where the five paintings remained and took another one, which this time had to be 'Thunder And Lightning Over Lindisfarne' from its dark grey skies, and handed it to Mr. Winslow.

“The shop that assisted Mr. Bridges in his amusing subterfuge assures me that, once this second painting has been carefully removed, the masterpiece underneath will fetch a minimum of one thousand pounds if not more”, he said smoothly. “Constables, would you kindly escort Mr. Blacker and Miss Banner to the cells?”

The two students were dragged noisily away. I turned to my friend.

“All right”, I demanded. “How did you know?”

“I must say that I rather like the late Mr. Bridges”, Sherlock said. “He gave you all a clue yet you failed to see it.”

“The coins?” I asked. “You mean “BRAMBRABB? That meant something?”

I noticed at this point that Mr. Arkle had moved to comfort a stunned Miss Horn. She did not seem overly inclined to object to this.

“It meant nothing in itself”, Sherlock said. “But if you take the initial letters of the cities where those coins were produced, you get two 'S's, an 'M', a 'T', an 'O' and an 'R'. Rearrange _those_ letters and you get the word 'storms'. Only one of the pieces of art that Mr. Bridges had so carefully selected featured stormy skies so that had to be the one that concealed the treasure. Mr. Bridges evidently had a sense of humour that went over the head of the searchers as none of them apparently noted the six modern reproductions which they passed every day in the entrance-hall, or for that matter wondered just why he might have chosen to display such low-quality work so prominently.”

He turned to Miss Horn.

“I am truly sorry that this did not turn out quite as you may have hoped”, he said gently, “but it was better that you found out the truth about Mr. Blacker now rather than later.”

She nodded and moved even closer to Mr. Arkle.

“What made you even suspect him?” I asked.

“When he talked about the other students, he referred to Miss Banner by her first name”, Sherlock explained. “As I am sure you would agree, she does not seem the sort of person to attract that degree of familiarity unless there was something more to it. That was why I spent so long at the University. I protect my clients – from everything!”

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Postscriptum: Neither Mr. Blacker nor Miss Banner went to gaol for their actions although Mr. Blacker's father was so disgusted by his son's behaviour that he disowned him thus forcing him to drop out of university. I subsequently learned that the ghastly pair had emigrated to Africa, as if that continent did not have enough problems. 

Mr. Arkle and Mr. Winslow sold their painting soon after for fifteen hundred guineas‡, and when his course was completed Mr. Arkle and Miss Horn returned to America. They married soon after, but not before sending us a gold Napoleons framed as a memento of our case. Not one of their original six; it was the one minted in Paris, the City of Lovers. 

Hmm.

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_Notes:_   
_† A real pub close to the main A4123 road heading up to Wolverhampton, still open as of 2020 and if you are ever in the area for God's sake don't go there! It was just up the road from my late grandmother's house and used to be a lovely old-style pub, but when I made the mistake of going there some years back they had ripped the guts out of the place so it was all pine and bright lights. Horrible! _  
 _‡ £1,575. This would be at least £115,000 ($135,000) at 2020 prices, but an ample demonstration of just how much art prices have outstripped inflation is shown by the last (certified) Rubens work sold, Massacre of the Innocents in 2002, which fetched around £80 million ($1 billion) at 2020 prices.___

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	6. Interlude: From A Land Down Under

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 1900\. Sherlock makes a man's dreams come true – from the other wide of the world!

_[Narration by Doctor John Watson, M.D.]_

I had another of our friend Mr. Godfreyson's 'boys' round to Baker Street for treatment, after he had experienced a particularly rough client. Which was a coincidence, our friend had told us, for said client would experience a particularly rough journey home that evening courtesy of four of his largest boys. 

Mr. Paul Todhunter was a strapping Australian fellow who, physically at least, reminded me of Mr. Brendon Drummond, now living happily up in the Far North of Scotland. Indeed Mr. Todhunter had visited his fellow countryman some months back thanks to the generosity of Sherlock who had conspired with Stevie to send some papers to his company's offices in Edinburgh, and had paid for our friend here to take them and to call in on Mr. Drummond who had also been in the Scottish capital on business. 

However, although the two gentlemen may have been physically similar their characters were, I had decided, very different. Mr. Todhunter was shy and seemed almost sad for some reason. I of course could only treat his physical ailments, but I knew that something was not right with him inside.

My musings were interrupted by the return of Sherlock, which surprised me as he rarely intruded when I was treating Mr. Godfreyson's 'boys' (for all their rough profession many of them were quite shy). He was not alone; with him was someone who looked strikingly familiar, and I was about to remark on it when my patient gasped.

“Ah, I was hoping that we might catch you, Todd”, Sherlock smiled. “This is Mark – Mr. Mark Drummond. Brendon's nephew.”

Mr. Todhunter looked like he had seen a ghost, and went bright red at the two of them blundering in on him almost naked. Mr. Drummond smiled.

“Yeah, Don said he'd met someone from home”, he grinned, walking up to Mr. Todhunter and eyeing him most lasciviously. “Didn't mention what a hot piece of arse he was, though!”

Let me tell you, even molly-men blush!

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“Did you plan this?” I demanded of Sherlock once the two Australians had gone.

He smiled at me.

“Brendon mentioned that Paul had a rather embarrassing crush on him”, he said, “and since Aedh might well have killed him for it, he suggested a nephew of his who he knew wanted to come to England and find someone to settle down with. They both would prefer to be ordinary farm-hands than having to work in the city – which is fortunate as one of my father's farms needs a couple of good men.”

“Sherlock Holmes, matchmaker”, I smiled.

“I prefer Sherlock Holmes, love-maker”, he shot back. “You, my room, naked, two minutes.”'

He really was too much at times. I would have said something, but I only had two minutes so I did not have the time.

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	7. Case 292: The Adventure Of The Sleepless Policeman ☼

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 1900\. Sometimes a man's gotta do what a man's gotta do – but this? Really? Chief-Inspector Tobias Gregson has his hands full in every sense as a death of a friend and having to deal with an obstreperous politician with connections throws all the weight of things on him. Literally!

_[Narration by Chief-Inspector Tobias Gregson]_

They say that you should never think that you have seen it all, because that is when life will throw you something that proves you oh so very wrong. But I was a London policeman many years in the job, and I had thought that surely there was little left out there especially with me so near retirement. 

The exact phrase is 'tempting fate'.

“If you tell anyone about this”, Gary muttered from about one inch away from my left ear, “I'll have to kill you!”

“Not to worry”, I said. “I would top myself first!”

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It was St. Valentine's Day of all days, which I suppose just shows that the Fates have a sick sense of humour. Gary's wife Valerie had been ill leading up to Christmas but had seemed to rally in the New Year. However it had been a false dawn; she had worsened the weekend before last and had been gone in barely forty-eight hours. I had been lucky that her messenger had caught me as I knew where Gary was at the time, and I had been able to get him to her so that he could say his goodbyes. It had all been horribly emotional – _and he did not know the half of it!_

While he had gone to use the bathroom Valerie had assumed that look that I had come to dread on any woman's face, the sort when you just know that she is going to say something that you will not like one little bit. And as usual when I thought the worst, I was dead right.

“That dream of ours”, she smiled, “the cottage in the Lakes. I want you to have it, Toby.”

“What?” I was confused.

“You've become good friends despite everything”, she said, “and I know he trusts you. You're due to retire at the same time; say you'll keep an eye on him for me?”

That was emotional blackmail, and she damn well knew it! I scowled, but nodded.

“One more thing”, she said hurriedly as we heard the sound of the toilet flushing. “He likes to be hugged.”

I stared at her incredulously. _What?!_

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Which was why on this of all days I now had my arms full of a sniffing fellow chief-inspector, thanking the Good Lord only that no-one could see us now or we would have to quit and move to Mongolia. Or Antarctica. Or one of us to each. Lord help me, things could not get any weirder!

One day. One day, I would learn.

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“You seem distracted, Gregson.”

Mr. Holmes looked at me quizzically. He had called round to offer his condolences – to me as well as Gary, who I knew he had caught on his rounds earlier – and I suspected that he knew rather too much about what had happened yesterday. Gary and I had..... Lord help me but it had actually been almost tolerable!

“Poor Gary”, I said absent-mindedly. “Thank you for helping him sort that burglary case, sir.”

“Mr. Crowley and the Reverend Rival felt that it was time Mr. Howard saw what the inside of a gaol looked like”, he said. “The reverend also pointed something else out to me, something which normally John would have told me had he not been in hospital with this winter flu.”

“I am surprised that he does not catch more things with his work, sir”, I said. “What did they want?”

Mr. Holmes hesitated for some reason.

“Have you heard of 'The Sleepless Policeman?'” he asked.

For a horrible moment I thought that he knew about me and Gary, before thankfully I placed the phrase. My face darkened.

“Some society magazine idiot!” I said sharply. “Always going on at us for not doing our jobs properly and how he would do them so much better. Easy to say from behind a few lines of print that he is not even brave enough to put his name to. Why?”

“His latest article is a thinly-veiled attack on poor LeStrade, claiming that he is just a lap-dog who relies on me for his few successes.”

It was a horrible and ill-timed accusation, although I had to admit that the thought of the pugnacious Gary as anyone's lap-dog might have been kind of funny at any other time. But certainly not now.

“Gary will likely hunt him down once he finds out”, I said. “And in this city there is no way that he will not.”

“I thought that perhaps we might deal with the unpleasant Mr. David Lamb first”, he said. “I shall need your help. How many policemen's uniforms can you 'borrow' for me?”

I looked at him in surprise.

“I thought that the fellow was anonymous?” I asked.

“Miss St. Leger”, he said as if that explained everything (although it pretty much did, knowing the lady in question). But what did he want all those uniforms for?

So he explained it to me – and the fellow was a genius!

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“If you tell anyone about this either”, Gary muttered from just in front of me in my bed – _my bed!_ – “I'll still have to kill you!”

“Yes, I am going to run around the Met yelling about how I am sleeping with a fellow chief-inspector”, I said. “Bang would go both our pensions, probably along with the poor Chief Commissioner's heart! Now shut up and sleep!”

He snorted at that but still contrived to burrow back into me before he went under. 

Not get any weirder, eh? Hah!

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I got Mr. Holmes all the uniforms that he wanted, and he also asked that I make sure that I was at one of my stations the next day as I would have a visitor. He also told me what to say, and sure enough about mid-afternoon Mr. David Lamb came charging into the station and _demanded_ to see someone in charge. He was duly shown up to my office.

Doctor Watson often says that a modern society needs journalists much as it needs lawyers, politicians and sewage workers, and for pretty much the same reason. I suppose that he was right on that, but this little twerp got on the wrong side of me when he was halfway through the door and already whining. He was a mixed-breed of a fellow, round-faced and so puffed up with his own importance that he nearly missed the chair because his nose was so high. All the arrogance of the nobility but with no class to make up for it, and no sense to realize what it made him look like.

“This is harassment!” he said (even his voice was annoying; it reminded me of one of those rubber bones that you can buy for dogs). “Men from your station have been following me around all day, and I _demand_ that you put a stop to it!”

I managed to feign a decent surprise.

“We have no men set on such a task, sir”, I said. “I would know. Did you get the names of any of these officers?”

“Bradshaw, Hannah, Michaelson and Phillips”, he said.

“We have no-one of those names here”, I said firmly. “Maybe you have the wrong police-station? I know that there is a Phillips over at St. Pancras.”

He looked at me as if I were quite mad!

“They all said that they came from here!” he insisted.

I hesitated for effect.

“I do not wish to worry you, sir”, I said, “but.... maybe they were not policemen at all.”

“What do you mean?” he demanded (ye Gods, his voice was getting even higher as he got more excited!). “They wore policemen's uniforms, had all the equipment and said that they came from here!”

“Anyone can rent a policeman's uniform from a costume-shop”, I said. “It looks like someone is spying on you for some reason and using our uniforms as a cover. Of course I am sure that _you_ have nothing to hide.”

As I had known he would, he reddened at that. Mr. Holmes had showm me Miss St. Leger's (very thick) file on the fellow and..... even by London stanards, ugh! 

_(Yes, I had had the terrifying thought as to what that lady had on me and Gary, but surely even she could not know.... could she?)_

“I have to meet with a number of very private sources”, my unwelcome visitor said testily. “They will hardly talk to me when they see four policeman on my tail!”

“Have you annoyed anyone in particular of late?” I asked innocently, only narrowly managing to not add 'by getting out of bed, or just breathing?' 

_Gary was becoming a bad influence on me!_

“I did point out one of your officer's over-reliance on the famous Mr. Sherlock Holmes”, he admitted, “but so what?”

I winced at that.

“I hardly like to ask, sir”, I said carefully, “but.... these so-called policemen that you say were following you – were they by any chance _large_ gentlemen?”

He looked at me strangely.

“Yes”, he said. “Every one of them tall and very muscular. Why do you say that?”

I hesitated for effect.

“I happen to know that Mr. Holmes recently did a rather large favour for the owner of a molly-house in this city”, I said. “By 'large', I mean 'proving a friend of theirs innocent so that they did not hang'. The businessman in question was most grateful.”

He was now clearly bewildered.

“So?” he said testily.

“So”, I said, “that businessman employs men who often dress up in the course of their work, sometimes even as policemen....”

“Ugh! That is horrible!”

“Which means that he must have taken ill against your having slurred his friend”, I finished.

“I did not 'slur' him!” he said hotly. “I merely pointed out that one of your fellow policemen unfairly takes credit for someone else's work.”

“Most unhappily for you, that gentleman is a good friend of Mr. Holmes too”, I said. “If I were you I would be off to your magazine and get them to print a complete retraction of your story. And an apology. A large donation to a local charity might be advisable as well.”

“Why should I do such a thing?” he demanded.

“Because”, I said, “I have investigated that businessman's rather sordid trade before and I know how it works, much as I might wish not to. He gives people who offend him three days to do the right thing, and then he acts.”

“Acts?” he echoed, puzzled.

“To use the vernacular”, I smiled, “you shafted Mr. Holmes's friend in your article. That businessmen's rather large associates will therefore shaft you – without using the vernacular!”

He was horrified!

“You have to protect me!” he insisted.

“How?” I asked reasonably. “We cannot afford to mount a twenty-four hour guard to keep them at bay. Sooner or later we will have to stop, and then they will strike. I fear that it may be even worse if they are at all frustrated. A swift apology is really your best solution, sir.”

He glowered at me, then left to complain to someone else. I did not smile until he was safely gone.

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“Thanks”, Gary yawned as we lay together that evening. “For everything. Including the cake.”

“That is what friends are for”, I said. “I am sure that the Sleepless Policeman will be a lot more careful in future, for if he is not then Mr. Godfreyson's 'boys' will just happen to drop by and....”

I stopped. He was already asleep. Thankfully no-one – all right, except almost certainly Miss St. Leger – knew about this.

It was a nice thought, and I would have it for nearly a whole week before poor Gary faced yet more problems and I had to have a Talk with Mr. Holmes.

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	8. Case 293: The Adventure Of The Conk-Singleton Forgers

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 1900\. After one of the most painful conversations ever, Sherlock has to ride to the rescue of his friend LeStrade when the Metropolitan Police Service once again disgraces itself. The great detective makes the most pathetic call for help on record, but he gets it anyway. And so, later, does John!

_[Narration by Doctor John Watson, M.D.]_

Foreword: At the time this story was set the Bank of England had a near-monopoly on the printing of notes in that no new banks were allowed to produce any, but those which had been issuing them prior to the 1844 Bank Charter Act had been allowed to continue so doing. The gradual consolidation of smaller banks into larger ones was slowly whittling down the number of separate printers left and Fox, Fowler & Company would be the last such, losing its entitlement when it was acquired by the Midland Bank in 1921. £5 was the smallest note value in circulation at the time of this story and notes existed in denominations up to £1,000, but £50 was the largest in common use (although I never saw any of these!). Ten-shilling and £1 notes were not issued until 1928.

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As a doctor I was more than used to the odd embarrassing conversation. But this one had to have been the weirdest in my whole career. I stared at the tall form of Chief-Inspector Gregson and wondered if I had heard him correctly.

I did note however that Sherlock did not seem all that surprised.

“You did _what?”_ I asked eventually.

Poor Gregson managed to turn even redder, and sipped his second whisky. He looked more than capable of finishing the whole decanter!

“You know how the idiot had been so down lately after Valerie died”, he said, pointedly not looking at either of us. “Then this forgery business coming on top of it... damnation gentlemen, what is a man to do?”

Poor Mrs. LeStrade had died of a heart-attack a little over two weeks back, just when I had come down with a recent bout of winter flu, and I knew that her husband had been devastated. Seriously though, this? LeStrade had had problems with some scurrilous society magazine idiot which Sherlock had helped him deal with and was now in another major investigation over the recent money-printing scandal that had been in the newspapers these past few days, but the blushing fellow before us had gone round to his house to console him and his burly fellow policeman had blurted out a request that he could.... sort of.... just hold him.

“It is nothing like what you gentlemen have”, Gregson said hurriedly. “I mean we are too old for.... we would never.... you know.”

“You would never sit and wave your arms around in a strange manner?” Sherlock asked far too innocently. We both glared at him.

“I am fifty-six years old and frankly I cannot wait for retirement!” Gregson sighed. “We all knew Val's time was short, but after she had that final collapse she asked me that I would promise to look after the old goat. I never thought.... I mean....”

“There is nothing wrong in gentlemen seeking comfort by sitting with other gentlemen”, I said consolingly. “Manly embracing is quite acceptable.”

Sherlock coughed pointedly. Again we both glared at him. Someone was at serious risk of being _sans_ bacon tomorrow!

“I think that we had better move on to the more important matter of your cudd.... LeStrade's money problems”, Sherlock said, shaking his head at me in a way that was just annoying while our poor visitor blushed even more. “Tell us what happened, Gregson. We have read about it in the newspapers but we did not know that a dear friend of ours had been dragged into it.”

Gregson's relief at the change of topic was palpable. So would mine have been, in his shoes.

“At the end of last year forged bank-notes began appearing in parts of the East End”, he said. “Nothing unusual about that but these were high quality forgeries, all Bank of England five- and ten-pound notes. Normally criminals go for the larger denominations like fifties or they target one of the private banks, which is how we tend to nab them. The first one was only spotted so soon because a pawnbroker in Stepney was a coin-collector on the side and he knew what to look for when he was handed one. Someone has printed loads of the things and the top lot thought that they had it easy when we nabbed a set of plates during a raid on a drugs den in Whitechapel. The name on the back was 'Conk-Singleton'.”

“I am guessing that it was not that easy”, Sherlock smiled. Our visitor nodded.

“The only fellow of that name turned out to be a seventy-year-old collector of rare stamps who lives in Muswell Hill”, he snorted. “Half-blind, nearly deaf and with one leg; the poor old fellow had a fit when they went and questioned him about it! He clearly had nothing to do with the ramp. It was what happened next that was so bad.”

“What was that?” I asked.

“They had got another lead and were building up to a raid on a warehouse on the docks”, Gregson said. “There is a family of known criminals down there, the Carrs, and they were sure that they were behind the whole thing. But one day Gary was travelling back from Essex to his office and he got attacked on leaving the station, Liverpool Street. There were four of them and they managed to get away with his brief-case. The raid on the warehouse fell flat but there had clearly been something going on in there. Now people are saying that he faked the attack and that he tipped off the Carrs for a cut.”

I underlined the 'Gary' in there. Even Sherlock and I had hardly ever called his colleague 'Gawain' to his face. He just seemed much more.... 'LeStrade'.

“Stuff and nonsense!” I said. “Who would be dumb enough to believe that, even in the Met?”

“It gets worse”, Gregson said morosely. “Someone went and leaked the whole shebang to the 'Weekly Chronicle', the worst rag in town. They have said that they will publish it in their next edition come Friday, and our lawyers say we cannot stop them. It will be all over the weekend papers! But the most damnable thing of all? Gary had given his six months' notice and was about to be bumped!”

“What?” I asked, confused.

“A last-minute promotion so that the recipient can retire on a better pension”, Sherlock explained. “To superintendent in this case.”

I was dubious at such practices which could only drain the public purse and further reduce confidence in the police service, although at least in this instance it would have been merited. Our friend Inspector Fraser Macdonald should have been similarly treated had he not come into wealth as a result of the events described in The Adventure Of The Mummy's Curse, although when the Metropolitan Police Service had disgraced itself by refusing to honour even the smaller payout that he had been due, Sherlock had had to have Words with certain people in high office to secure it for him. Mr. Macdonald's lover Chatton Smith had written thanking us for our efforts, especially as it had enabled the sex-mad Cumberlander to make even more purchases from a certain London shop not far from here which, I presume, explained the wobbly handwriting. That and the fact Mr. Smith had ended by admitting his lover had made him write the whole thing while impaled on 'the Frayer'!

We had some strange friends, and they really needed to stop giving some sex-crazed detective in the vicinity ideas like that. Some time. 

Sherlock smiled knowingly. I tried to steady my inexplicably increased breathing.

“You too must be thinking about pastures new”, he said to our guest. Gregson blushed fiercely.

“Gary wanted to take Val and go and live up in the Lakes, not far from two of his boys”, he said. “He, uh, had sort of asked if I might want to join them, but that is all gone now.”

“I do not see why”, Sherlock said. “You can hardly be expected to live out your days in London when the beauty of the Lakes beckon, and police pensions are better in this day and age. We shall make this investigation a priority, Gregson, and we shall clear your friend's name. I promise.”

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“It must be difficult for the poor fellow”, I said once Gregson had left, looking rather more cheerful than when he had arrived. “Fifty-six years old the pair of them.”

“Yes, older gentlemen do find things _harder_ ”, said someone who did not want to get laid (or do any laying) in the immediate future. 

I glared at him, and he chuckled.

“We have precious little to go on”, he said. “Let us make use of what we have. Someone wishes to discredit LeStrade and to force him to retire early. Therefore we are looking at someone who would benefit from his leaving _now_ rather than in six months' time.”

“We are going to see Sergeant Baldur?” I asked, surprised. “Why did we not just ask Gregson?”

“Because the other thing that he and his new embracing partner share in common is an occasional tendency to push at the boundaries of the law”, he said, “and with both of them coming up to retirement I do not wish for anything to endanger either of their plans for that quiet little cottage in the Lakes which, I am sure, will 'just happen' to be quite near a soon to be very profitable bakery!”

I smiled at that. 

“What about the attack?” I asked.

“That worries me”, Sherlock said. “Not just for the safety of our friend but because of what it implies.”

“Which is?” I asked. He turned to me.

“Only someone within the police service would have known that he was carrying case files that day”, he said grimly. “It is not the sort of thing that officers transport around London, for obvious reasons. No, we have another 'bent copper', and given that the attack was by four men, likely more than one of the vermin!”

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Sergeant Baldur duly welcomed us to his new station, he having moved nearer to Baker Street after the reorganization caused by the opening of a new station last year. He had heard of the forgery case and was incredulous at the allegations being made against LeStrade, although he did admit that the old fellow did rub more than a few people in the force up the wrong way, and they were likely to seize this chance for 'payback'. That was I had to admit true but it did not make it any the less reprehensible, especially as this was supposed to be the side of law and order.

_(I had said as much to Sherlock on the way over and he had shuddered for some reason. It had turned out that 'Law And Order' was the title of one of his inimitable mother's latest crimes against literature in which a group of virile young policemen discovered the same strange potion which enabled them to run faster than criminals had some very horizontal side-effects that lasted for days. He would have gone into more detail but I had threatened to get out of the cab, reducing him to a still annoying smirk!)_

“I still cannot believe that they are trying to force the old man out!” the sergeant said angrily. “I thought that we were all supposed to be the side of justice!”

“You can help us with one aspect of this case”, Sherlock said. “I know that hese 'bump' promotions are only nominal, but if LeStrade were forced out now who among the current crop of inspectors might qualify to replace him until the selection process is complete? Even a few months as an acting chief-inspector would give someone a considerable advantage when the next actual post comes round.”

The sergeant thought for some time.

“There were the four who went up against him when he got promoted last year”, he said. “Ned Swithers got the next post that came up last December and Tommy Bradford, the Commissioner's sprog, transferred to Norfolk when he married in January. On the other hand Jason Pollock, one of the current crop of inspectors, has almost enough time under his belt plus he has family in the service, so I am sure that he will go for it.”

“Indeed”, Sherlock said. “Tell us about them all, please.”

“Giles Montacute who works out of Walham Green”, he said. “He would probably be quite good at it as he loathes walking the streets but loves the paperwork. Takes all sorts, I suppose. He is what you would call a safe pair of hands but his arrogant attitude rubs people up the wrong way, which is why he may not have got promoted yet. The Blessed Saint Giles, they call him. He is fifty-three and getting on a bit so he may be thinking that he has not got many chances left.”

“Motive”, I muttered sagely, and ignoring the eye-roll from the wiseacre next to me.

“Then there is Adrian Wallis up in Harrow”, the sergeant continued. “He is your typical alpha male; 'Hadrian's Wall' is his nickname because he's thick and immovable, plus he thinks more public executions Roman-style would deter the criminal classes. Possibly a good choice if those at the top wanted to be seen to be Taking Positive Action! But he is also very vocal about women keeping to their place and not being allowed the vote, and there are one or two more forward-looking members on the selection committee who I would say take against that. Forty-five so younger than St. Giles, but not by much.”

“I cannot think why _he_ got passed over!” I muttered. Sherlock shook his head at me but smiled.

“Last there is the newcomer, that git Jason Pollock over at Bethnal Green”, the sergeant said, looking pained. “A real high-flyer but a bit too slick for my liking; his nickname is.... the wife would clip my ear if I said it so I will just say rhyming slang and damn appropriate! He made sergeant in record time and was almost as quick to reach inspector, which is why I think him being the best part of a year short will not stop him from applying. He is barely forty so the youngest of the three, which means that he has plenty of time left.”

“Most interesting”, Sherlock said. “I do not suppose you would happen to know if anyone who might be in a position to challenge these three in six months' time when LeStrade is due to actually leave?”

The sergeant frowned.

“I hope Bill Blenkinsopp in Shepherd's Bush is not involved”, he said. “Like Pollock he has about a year left before he might qualify but he has no family in the service to 'overlook' that. He has always struck me as an honourable fellow, a bit dull but he gets things done and does not talk down to people like too many these days. I know that your friend Mr. Tudor is one of the ones under him and there were some faint rumblings of coppers muttering against him after that canal business, but Blenkinsopp stamped on them before they got serious.”

“He sounds the best of a bad bunch”, Sherlock observed. “Of course one of those four gentlemen stands out as the most obvious candidate but I rather think that I shall have to call on the services of an expert in this instance. Still, needs must.”

_Not the lounge-lizard _, I prayed desperately. His prolonged absence from Baker Street was one of the happy parts of my life just then.__

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Sherlock called at the nearest telegraph office to summon help from whoever, then we set off to LeStrade's house. The burly policeman looked shattered from recent events I thought, and he still bore some of the marks of the attack. He took us out into the garden and we all sat down.

“I am doing what I can, my friend”, Sherlock said. “Though I was a little surprised that I not only had to hear of your troubles from your neighbour rather than your good self, but that you did not even confide in our mutual friend Sergeant Baldur.”

“Toby came to see you?” he asked surprised.

I made a mental note about that 'Toby', and of course received a sharp look from the resident mind-reader in the vicinity. Harrumph!

“He is concerned about you”, Sherlock said, still looking pointedly at me. “Tell us, what did they offer you?”

The chief-inspector baulked.

“What do you mean?” he asked warily.

“Come, my friend”, Sherlock said firmly, “I know full well that you would have come to me to help clear your name had someone not warned you to desist. An offer was made and you accepted it as the lesser evil. What was it?”

I thought for a moment that our friend was going to continue to deny it but then he visibly slumped. 

“Resignation immediately the case breaks, retirement at chief-inspector and a review some months down the line that would clear my name once the press lost interest.”

“They bought you off!” I said angrily.

“Doctor, I have a family in the service”, the policeman said testily. “If my name is tarnished then so is theirs; you know how these things work.”

“I also suppose that they threatened to move against your kin if you turned down their 'generous offer'”, Sherlock said. “To think that these are the people responsible for law and order in this city! I will not allow it!”

“You can't stop rumour”, LeStrade said with a grimace. “No matter what you do, people will talk.”

“Then we shall give them something to talk about”, Sherlock said firmly. “Question. What documents were you carrying when you were attacked.”

“Nothing relating to the Conk-Singleton case”, the policeman said. “I did go to Shenfield to interview a fellow who claimed to know something; we got a tip-off at one of the other stations. The fellow said he'd only speak to me but when I got there it was a false address. So now everyone thinks that I faked the loss of the damn documents!”

Sherlock stared at him for a moment before continuing. 

“Why were _you_ put in charge of such a major case?” he asked.

“What?” LeStrade looked surprised. I was too; the question seemed a little rude.

“Something of that magnitude usually attracts a superintendent at the very least”, Sherlock said. “If not a chief-superintendent. Yet they put you in charge. Why?”

“Because they did not want to draw attention to it”, he said.

“Epic fail there!” I muttered. Sherlock shot me a look.

“Gawain”, he said, not looking at the chief-inspector, “Is there anything else that you would like to tell us?”

There was a short but definite pause.

“Not that I can think of”, LeStrade said, a little defensively I thought.

“Very well”, Sherlock said standing up. “Doubtless we will inform you of any developments. Good day.”

He seemed suddenly formal with someone that we knew so well. I hurried after him as we left.

“What was all that about?” I asked curiously.

“He lied to us”, Sherlock said. “He knows a lot more than he said. He is prepared to sacrifice himself for his family, against whom he all to rightly fears retribution. However I am not going to let him.”

“Unfortunately?” He looked sharply at me.

“For the scum responsible”, he said determinedly. “I will _destroy_ them!”

It really was a cold day. I shivered despite the sun.

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I knew Sherlock well enough to realize that this case was weighing heavy on him. Which meant inevitably that there would have to be sacrifices on my behalf. Honestly, the things I did for love!

We dined that evening in a sombre mood and I took the unusual step of taking a shower before bedtime, claiming that I felt a little tired from the day's efforts. Fortunately there was a little-used door between the bathroom and Sherlock's bedroom and I slipped quietly into the latter, undressed myself and awaited him. I doubted that he would be long and indeed barely fifteen minutes later he came through the door.

And stopped stone dead. I was laid out naked on the bed with all our various sex toys scattered around within reach. He looked at me in surprise.

“You need this tonight”, I said quietly. “Free rein. Whatever you want, Sherlock. You are my true love and I want to make you happy.”

For once I actually thought he might cry but he bit back the tears and came over to me, undoing his shirt as he walked.

“Is this a good idea?” he said sounding uncertain. “This case.... I am feeling very raw, John. I may be rough.....”

“I do not care!” I said firmly. “I love you, and if you are unhappy then I am unhappy. Take me, my beloved. Any which way you want.”

He seemed to pull himself together and finished undressing while I shivered in anticipation. Then he gestured for me to turn onto my front and stretch out my limbs which he tied to the four corners of the bed. I was totally at his mercy, and he clambered silently on top of me before positioning himself at my entrance.

“You prepared yourself”, he whispered sounding almost awe-struck.

“I did not want to wait”, I whispered back.

He withdrew the plug and eased slowly inside me, barely moving until he was fully sheathed then he held himself there for what seemed like an eternity. Normally I would have begged him to move at that point but tonight I held myself back. Tonight was just for Sherlock. Just for the man I loved.

Finally he began to move, slowly at first but gradually picking up speed, until he was hammering into me while his hand reached out and began to jerk me off. I whined and he seemed to freeze.

“John?”

“For God's sake keep going!” I ground out.

He picked up the pace again, and without warming he was coming inside of me. I myself came just seconds later my body shuddering beneath his pinioned weight as he sank down on top of me. This was where I would normally ask to be untied but not tonight. Tonight I was Sherlock's, to do with what he willed. His happiness was everything to me.

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I woke to find myself untied and with everything cleared away, no evidence of the passion of the night before – apart from my still-aching muscles which protested violently every time that I moved. Sherlock must have heard my awakening for moments later he was in the room with me, a steaming coffee placed on the bedside table while he massaged some life back into my broken body, whispering quiet thanks and praises as he did so. I smiled goofily up at him and wondered if I would be capable of anything that day.

“I received two telegrams this morning”, he told me once I was able to sit up (just) and drink an absurdly heavy cup of coffee. 

“Who are they from?” I asked, leaning into him. It was odd my being naked while he was almost fully-clothed but just now I did not care. The happiness radiating from him was like manna from Heaven to me.

“This is from Luke”, he smiled, waving one of them. “I wished to know certain things about the work colleagues of one of our candidates for LeStrade's job.”

“You think that one of them was behind it?” I asked.

“Of course”, he said. “Was it not obvious?”

“No!” I protested. “How?”

“One of the reasons behind LeStrade's reluctance to talk to us was the weapon that had been used against him”, Sherlock said. “People may think that the police truncheon is just a stout stick but it leaves a distinctive mark to those who know it. He knew full well that at least one of his own was involved. Hence the threat to his kin in the force being so effective; it would not just be lack of promotion but perhaps even 'an accident' in what is after all a dangerous career.”

“But that would be stupid!” I protested. “A doctor examining his injuries would have reported the matter, surely?”

“Not if he was a police doctor”, Sherlock said flatly. “This goes higher up than I feared. Someone of very high office, capable of organizing this framing of a good officer. Unfortunately for them, their best-laid plans are about to go awry.”

“Who was the other telegram from?” I asked. He sipped his coffee and sighed happily.

“Mr. Marcus Crowley”, he said. “I decided that it was time to cash in one of my two favours. He will think that my price is rather high, but even though he is a criminal he is a man of honour. That and his friend the Reverend Rival will surely remind him of his moral duties. I rather think that today is going to be interesting.”

I glanced at him then winced. Moving my head quickly was not yet advisable, apparently.

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We took a cab to Sergeant Baldur's station – a very painful ride, I might add – and Sherlock went in briefly before returning alone and telling the cab-driver to take us to LeStrade's house. Which was also a long distance away, worse luck. The chief-inspector was tending his plants on the front garden and was reluctant to come with us but Sherlock eventually persuaded him. 

The driver took us to a quiet back-street in Limehouse that was, frankly, unwelcoming. At least judging from the speed at which he took off once he had been given his fare. The dust took some time to settle.

“Why have you brought me here?” LeStrade asked dully. 

“Oh you know, just wandering around”, Sherlock said with a nonchalance that was several miles beyond believable. 

I stared at him suspiciously. He crossed the road to where a warehouse with grimy windows backed onto the road with a stack of boxes by one of the windows. 

“I wonder what could _possibly_ be in here?” he said airily.

He clambered up on the boxes and peered through the window though I doubted that he could see much. He came down with a smile, however.

“Dear me, chief-inspector”, he said far too innocently. “It seems like there are some men inside this building who are _printing forged bank-notes!_. Tut tut tut how very dreadful. I think that you should call for back-up. Straight away.”

His voice was flatter than East Anglia. LeStrade looked at him suspiciously, and frankly I did not blame him; I had managed more sincerity than that with some of my worst patients!

“One of you could go to the nearest station”, the policeman suggested. 

“We could”, Sherlock agreed. “Or perhaps we might try calling for assistance, and hope that a spare police officer appears out of thin air.” He cupped his hands round his mouth. “Help.”

In terms of calls for help that ranked somewhere below pathetic; I barely heard him from a few feet away. Despite that, Gregson promptly emerged from the nearby alley with four constables close behind him. LeStrade stared at them in shock, although I was sure that Sherlock too noticed the very slight movement towards his neighbour before he caught himself. 

“We heard your call for help, sir”, Gregson said with a commendably straight face. “By a stroke of great fortune I happen to have some officers in the vicinity; these four here, two down the side and five round the front. Time for action, boys!”

He blew hard on his whistle and immediately there was the sound of a door being smashed in from somewhere nearby. Moments later a small and untidily-dressed man burst through the door that we had been standing by and bowled straight into LeStrade, Gregson easily slipping the cuffs on his while he was still stunned. The burly policeman smiled at last.

“If it isn't Mr. Jimmy Carr!” he chuckled. “Fancy meeting you here! I bet Bert and Alf aren't far away!”

“Want a lawyer!” the thug groused. “I 'aint saying nothin'!”

“Good idea”, Gregson said. “Save your story about how the presses and all those fake notes appeared inside a warehouse rented in your name for when you stand in front of the judge. They tend not to get many good laughs in their line of work!”

He hustled the villain back through the door he had entered by and roughly threw him down to lie with his confederates one of whom was already being manhandled out to the waiting police-van that we could see through the open main door. 

_“Amazing!”_ Sherlock said in what was obviously fake astonishment. “Chief-Inspector LeStrade, you and Mr. Gregson have caught the forgers who have been polluting the tills of London as of late. I am sure that your superiors will be _incredibly_ grateful that you had the amazing foresight to act on the anonymous tip-off from earlier, as so few officers would have done. How very fortunate that there are police officers like you whom us simple members of the public can trust.”

He stared meaningfully at LeStrade, who shook his head at him.

“Thank God you were never a criminal, Mr. Holmes!” he laughed. “London would've been yours for the taking!”

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It says something for the modern age that the capture of the Conk-Singleton forgers was in the London paper that I read that same afternoon as Sherlock and we went to see Colonel Bradford, then still Chief Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police Force. There was a tall and somewhat reedy blond fellow in the office with him, a superintendent from his markings who looked less than thrilled to see us. Probably another one of the top brass who thought that consulting detectives were the devil's work, I guessed.

“I am fortunate in that I know that I can always deal with men like Chief-Inspector LeStrade”, Sherlock said with a smile. “I shall miss him, although at least he steps down on a high note.”

“Well, we shall certainly give him the send-off he deserves”, the colonel said. “A double loss as Mr. Gregson has apparently decided that he too should retire and will be leaving us just days later. I should introduce you, gentlemen; this is Superintendent Miles Carton. Was there something that you particularly wished to see us about, Mr. Holmes? You did request his presence here.”

I caught a definite flicker of alarm on the superintendent's face and remembered what Sherlock had said about someone high up in the Met. Ah.

“I am rather afraid that there was”, my friend said, his tone notably sharper. “It is indeed the most welcome news that _some_ dangerous criminals have been removed from the streets today – but alas! dangerous criminals come in all shapes and sizes and sometimes some very strange disguises. Do they not, _superintendent?”_

His voice had now acquired a definite menacing tone. The tall policeman looked at him warily.

“I suppose so, sir”, he said. 

“For example”, Sherlock said, “there was the curious case of why poor LeStrade was, as you say in your line of work, 'fitted up'. A very thorough job too but one which, I am sad to say, may well cause the force no end of problems in the days to come unless certain steps are taken very, _very_ quickly.”

“Fitted up?” the colonel asked. “I do not understand. What do you mean, sir?”

“I am regrettably compelled to mar your moment of triumph, colonel”, Sherlock said. “You see, you have a major problem at one of your stations and you are about to lose a whole tranche of officers as a result. None of them will be able to depart with references, either.”

“What? Where?”

“When I heard that LeStrade had been attacked on his way back from Essex to his office”, Sherlock said, “I asked myself that old legal question. _Cui bono?_ – who benefits? Three police officers stood to gain a temporary but valuable promotion if LeStrade was forced out when he was; six months' delay and another arguably superior rival might well have been ranged against them for the full-time post. I focussed immediately on Mr. Jason Pollock at Bethnal Green because his was the only patch through which LeStrade's journey from his own police-station to Shenfield would have taken him. Also because a reliable source of mine told me that that was where the message that sent LeStrade that way was 'handed in', even though it was actually recorded as having come from another station.”

“Stuff and nonsense!” the superintendent said shortly. “Pollock is a good man.”

“You should know”, Sherlock said quietly. _“He is your nephew.”_

The colonel slowly turned and looked at the superintendent. It was not a nice look.

“Miles”, he said slowly, “the rules about divulging familial relations are crystal clear. You told me when you were promoted that you had no relatives in the force. _Is_ Pollock your nephew?”

“He is the son of the superintendent's older brother Martin, and changed his name by deed poll before entering the service”, Sherlock said. “I am sorry to say, colonel, that it gets much, _much_ worse than the non-divulging of familial ties.”

“Go on”, the old gentleman said, eyeing his superintendent balefully. 

“Inspector Pollock has, I am told, his own little clique of constables at the station”, Sherlock said. “Four of them – disguised, of course – lay in wait for LeStrade outside Liverpool Street Station's main entrance knowing that he eschews the underground and would be taking a cab. That in itself was suspicious; only those in the force would likely know that, let alone the fact that most unusually he would have been carrying documents that day which was a rare event in itself. It was their singular misfortune that one of them, who was meant merely to run off with the brief-case, was caught by LeStrade and chose to lash out with his truncheon.”

He took a folded piece of paper from his jacket pocket.

“These are the names of all the officers involved”, he said. 

“How did you find this out?” the colonel demanded his eyes bulging.

“We all have our secrets, colonel”, Sherlock smiled. “Do we not, _superintendent?”_

The superintendent baulked. 

“What?” he said, fiddling with his thinning hair.

“I spoke with Mrs. Pendennis”, Sherlock said. “She lives next door to LeStrade and, being a nosy person the sort of whom the police service would normally approve, she was listening in when she saw several officers visit. From photographs she has identified you and at two of your constables, and is quite prepared to testify in court that she heard you threaten both my friend and his family in the service. You were also the villain who started those malicious rumours about my friend.”

“Miles!” the colonel snapped.

“I am sure of course that the Metropolitan Police Service like all large organizations would prefer this matter to just go away”, Sherlock said. “Any sort of bad publicity is going to detract from the rosy glow that the public is feeling right now, that the boys in blue are on top of crime and that the notes in their wallets are what they purport to be. It is all rather ironic, really.”

“Ironic?” the colonel asked. “How, pray?”

“That this story started with a man looking as if he was about to be forced to resign from the police service and it ends with more than one man resigning. Six men if we include the station doctor, whose name you may also have noted on that list.”

Sherlock stared pointedly across the table at the two men.

“On my desk, by four”, the colonel said grimly. “No reference, as Mr. Holmes said.”

The superintendent nodded, gave us both a hate-filled glare and left.

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“To coin a Herculean metaphor, it went from the Hydra to the Augean Stables”, I remarked as we slumped into our chairs a few days later in the warmth of our Baker Street rooms. We had detoured via a certain Paddington bakery on the way home for both a celebration box of chocolate confections for me and for Sherlock to order a large cake to be sent round to a certain chief-inspector's house.

“How so?” my friend asked.

“Well, you destroyed the Hydra like Hercules, finding and removing the original head”, I said. “But like the Augean Stables you prevented the papers from saying what they were going to about LeStrade by sweeping it all away with the twin rivers of Truth and Justice.”

He just stared at me.

“I _am_ educated”, I said stiffly.

“But I love you anyway!” he grinned.

Memo to self: keep something handy to throw at Sherlock for when he is being even more irritating than usual. I huffed and turned my attentions back to all that delicious chocolate. At least that loved me!

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Postscriptum: Sad to say that someone in the Metropolitan Police Service did try to slip references to the criminals drummed out of the service, only for Sherlock's precautions to ensure that their (brief) new employers found out about their misdeeds anyway and sacked them at once. 

Somehow without my noticing it during our visit to Colonel Bradford's headquarters, Sherlock had managed to obtain a policeman's helmet which.... well, we made use of.

A gentleman never divulges _all_ the details!

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	9. Case 294: The Adventure Of The Zinc Filings

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 1900\. A minor case that could have had major repercussions had it been mishandled. After Sherlock endures yet another family problem (see also piscine creatures defecating in a marine environment), the dynamic duo travel to the East End where a passing sailor has made a complaint. Meanwhile John gets the right end of the stick as his lover spices up their sex life even more!

_[Narration by Doctor John Watson, M.D.]_

It was one of many curious coincidences that seemed to just happen during our adventures that a case involving forged notes was so swiftly followed by one concerning fake coins. Despite only an oblique reference to this case in my first collected works of Sherlock's achievements, the idea that something as minuscule as a zinc filing might prove decisive in resolving a case seems to have aroused the interest of a surprising number of people. But then those people read my books so clearly they are exceptionally learnéd.

I can _hear_ someone doing an eye-roll in the next room, the bastard!

I recall that I had been feeling particularly pleased with myself as I returned to Baker Street that fine April morn. My latest book of Sherlock’s cases was outselling even the most optimistic predictions of my publisher and I had come fresh from spending part of my hard-earned gains. Well, writing was hard work contrary to what many people thought. Also the wonderful 'That Shop' in Baker Street was now stocking several new lines which had made our nightly encounters even more interesting of late. Today was really turning out....

Crap! 

My good mood evaporated like the morning dew when I recognized the carriage of Mr. Randall Holmes parked outside our house. I might have known that our long run without his baleful presence could not last. And why had I left my gun behind that morning?

Fortunately only seconds later the lounge-lizard himself hurried out of the front door (without falling down the steps, worse luck) and his vehicle sped away (without overturning and killing its passenger or being struck by either an aerolite† or a random bolt of lightning, even worse luck). I braced myself internally; Sherlock endured his elder brother’s baleful presence only as a necessary evil in his service to the country but he had come to utterly hate it of late. It would had to have been serious for the scoundrel to be here. I wondered just how ruffled my beloved would be as a result.

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Very ruffled, as things turned out. I was barely through the door before he was on me and I noticed with some concern that he was again trying to scent me. He usually only did that when he was really upset – he always felt it was demeaning to another man despite my reassurances that I loved it (which I really did) – so I gently calmed him down and led him to the couch. Sexy times could wait till later; his well-being came first. Besides, my doctor's bag contained some definitely non-medical items for our evening in, at least one of which several body parts were already panicking over.

As it was nearly noon I sent a request down to Mrs. Malone to ask if she could produce one of her wonderful late breakfasts with extra bacon for Sherlock. She sent back that she had one already started (bless her!) and that it would be ready in under half an hour. That gave me time to calm my love down and find out exactly what his brother had done to upset him _this_ time. Apart from that annoying thing called continued breathing.

My love drew a deep breath.

“Randall wishes me to investigate a diplomatically sensitive case concerning a coiner”, he said at last.

I nodded, although I did not see why such a request would have upset him so much. 

“What else has happened?” I asked gently.

He looked up at me and I could see that he was close to tears.

“Mother and Father were away in Scotland all last month”, he said. “While they were gone they left Mycroft in charge of the house; he has been trying to get back into their good books after the divorce with Rachael.”

I tensed instinctively, and he must have noticed although he said nothing. Two years ago a minor case (The Adventure Of The Fiery Blaze) had led to our involvement in the final and, I had long thought, inevitable breakdown of Mr. Mycroft Holmes's marriage. That his wife was now married to the silent but loyal Mr. Blaze Trevelyan was wonderful for her, although the fact that this tied the family in blood to Blaze's younger brother whom I did not like one little bit because of the way that Cornish ex-fisherman lusted after my Sherlock was.... verging on being a shade too close to irksome.

I pulled myself together. Sherlock first.

“Did Mycroft do something? I asked. He nodded.

“He ordered my bedroom to be repainted and had everything that I had kept in there burnt”, he sniffed. “It was only memories but……”

I bit back my anger, wanting nothing more than to hunt down Mr. Mycroft Holmes and make him pay for that act of wanton cruelty. Sherlock had not had that room changed since he had been about twelve years of age and I knew how much he loved knowing that it was still there, a reminder that he was still family despite everything that had happened. Now it was gone, destroyed by his own blood.

“Mother is Bloody Furious!” Sherlock said with a watery smile (I made a mental note that that was what his sister Mrs. Thompson called a Level Nine, so substantial risk of damage to life, limb and property, let alone the terror that the higher Levels always made her commit more crimes against lit... write more). “She has told him that the room will be returned to exactly the way I had it, and ordered him to find copies of all the things that were thrown out. She has also banned him from the house for six months, longer if he fails to replace every lost item. That will be galling for him as he knows that Rachael and Blaze are always welcome there.”

“He deserves everything that he gets!” I growled. “His actions were utterly indefensible.”

My beloved smiled up at me. Physically Sherlock was two inches taller than me but at times of stress he tended to curl up into himself and I could more easily wrap my bulkier frame around his. We stayed sitting there until the bell rang, signifying the imminent arrival of our breakfast-come-dinner.

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Sherlock's eyes widened as he saw what I was taking out my bag and his already impressive erection somehow managed to increase still further. It was something that looked at first like a long rubber condom except that it had a lock-cap at the open end.

“Is..... that what I think it is?” he asked, softly.

“It is”, I said, blushing. “I saw it in a, um, magazine the other week, and ordered it from our special shop. I collected it this morning.”

_(I had chosen that method of securing the item because the idea of our elderly postman Bert accidentally opening the parcel and my having to explain to his widow as to why he had died of shock.... no! Let alone that either Mrs. Malone or Mrs. Rockland – or worse, both – would likely see it before it was sent up... double no! We had more than enough knowing looks from the pair of them as it was, thank you very much!)_

Sherlock stared at me incredulously. The ORMEROD (Over-time Release Maledom Extenuation and Rapid Overload Device) was basically an ultra-thin rubber condom which a gentleman could wrap around his cock before pleasuring his male lover. Once he had come he would withdraw and the base would then be locked, the seed spilling out through tiny holes along its length every time the recipient moved. It was more than enough for any man to take, except that of course that the refined and staid Victorians (who most definitely were anything but) would often add other things first such as ginger. Only a complete sadist would agree to have such a thing inside of them.

I held up the small bottle of ginger that I had purchased from the grocery store (nothing was secret these days; the damn shop assistant had openly sniggered at me!) and he gasped.

“John!”

“I want this”, I said firmly. “I want _you_ , Sherlock. I want to feel you inside me all day tomorrow. I love you so much!”

He looked almost ready to break down in tears at my actions but instead guided me down on the bed before starting to prepare me. He lined the rod with some ginger before rolling it over his cock and inserting the whole thing inside of me. I moaned in ecstasy but when he hesitated it changed to a growl, and had I been capable of movement I would have pulled him inside of me.

“Patience is a virtue, beloved!” he teased. Had I been capable of those tricky things called words I would doubtless have managed a cutting reply but I had to settle for another moan as he bottomed out, his own moaning at the sensitivity of the spice rubbing against his erection cutting across mine. Thank the Lord that our rooms were so isolated from everyone else's at 221B!

It felt odd to feel him come like this, muffled by the rubber as he was and with the ginger yet to make its presence felt. He eased gently out, keeping me raised up so his come could not follow and added a copious amount of ginger before sealing the rod shut. Then using that inhuman strength of his he gently slipped under me while moving my shattered body on top of his own, supporting my greater weight with ease.

“I love you so much”, he whispered to me once we were under the sheets together. “I know I do not tell you that often enough John, but you are my life. You are my very reason for being. Thank you so much.”

I smiled into his shoulder barely noticing the heat being generated inside of me. Besides I had something much hotter, for which I would be eternally grateful.

_Or at least for as long as I lived!_

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“The case is a rather odd one”, Sherlock said the following morning. Mrs. Malone’s crispy bacon had worked its magic and we had cuddled (I am not ashamed to admit that for once, given my love's needs just then) for the best part of an hour before he had felt ready to discuss the case that his irritating brother had brought along with the news of their sibling’s foul deeds. “It concerns three houses along East Smithfield near both the Royal Mint and the Tower itself; numbers 97, 99 and 101.”

I nodded and even that simple action caused the rod inside of me to shift slightly. I had made the mistake of sitting down while washing that morning and the resultant fire inside had made me come without warning, let alone that I had endured a near-permanent erection since waking. My eyes watered again; just how much ginger had he put inside that thing?

“Number 97 is home to Mr. Dorin Albu, one of the most prominent Rumanians living in our fair city”, he said, his eyes twinkling at my distress. “He is a minor functionary at the embassy so I am afraid has the dreaded diplomatic immunity which we have come across more than once, and rarely to any good end. The position of his country in the forthcoming European conflict is as yet unclear so we do not wish to upset him if we can avoid it. Unless of course he turns out to be the guilty party in which case Randall will be really quite annoyed.”

I silently hoped for just such an outcome. I did not venture to risk a nod.

“Number 99 is reportedly the scene of the coiner’s operations”, he went on. “Unfortunately the house is split into three parts and each floor is occupied by a potential suspect. In the basement we have Mr. Robin Trent, a clerk in his late twenties who works at the London City and Middlesex Bank in St. Paul’s. He has a somewhat dubious past; his wife died in suspicious circumstances although nothing was ever proven. He benefited greatly from a life insurance policy that he had taken out on her just three months prior.”

“Also he works with money so he would know how it is made”, I offered, quite proud at having managed so long a sentence.

“On the ground floor we have Mr. Sean Davies, single, thirty-two and with links to Irish nationalist groups who of course are always in want of money. He does casual labour around the docks, and Randall believes that the amount that he spends is more than can be accounted for by such an existence.”

I suspected that the lounge-lizard, who despite his family's Hibernian background was fiercely anti-Irish, might be letting his own prejudices lead him to such a conclusion, and in my distraction made the mistake of nodding. 

“The first floor?” I gasped.

“Occupied by the Marklands, a newly-married couple recently arrived from the United States”, he said, grinning at my evident discomfiture. “Mr. Jehu Markland owns two businesses which he purchased shortly after coming here but does not take any part in the running of. His wife Carly is pregnant with their first child.”

“They must have had money to be able to afford to buy a whole business, let alone two”, I said.

“An inheritance in their homeland”, he said. “Or so they claim. Randall is investigating that but as it is the United States that may take some time.”

“What about number 101?” I asked.

“It is owned by a middle-aged gentleman called Mr. Sebastian Gold”, he said. “Forty-five and separated from his wife though according to the divorce petition he is undertaking and that she is not contesting it was because of her behaviour and not his, which is unusual in this day and age. It was his brother Sylvester who was visiting at the time, and who reported the suspicious goings-on next door.”

_(I may have mentioned this before, but although marriage breakdowns were problematic enough the courts could always be relied upon to make things even more difficult. One way round this was that it had become standard social practice regardless of who was to blame, the husband would usually provide evidence even if faked of his infidelity. That in this case the wife was the one so doing was not so much unusual as almost unknown)._

“What sort of goings-on?” I asked.

“Strange smells and noises in the basement which adjoins Mr. Gold’s own”, he said. “He suspected at first that it was something wrong with the drains but he claimed that he heard banging coming from next door although he could not say from which floor. I suspect that one of the people in that street is a coiner.”

“I would have thought that there would be more money in faking notes like the Carrs did”, I observed.

“In this case I suspect that there may be a reason for that particular choice”, he said. “The problem will be in identifying which of the people is the coiner and therefore the guilty party. A false accusation, especially if it involves Mr. Albu, could be disastrous.”

I had to abort a nod, but the rod moved again and my eyes watered.

“So I thought that we might head over to the area and see what we can see”, he said airily.

I stared at him in horror. East Smithfield had to be at least five miles away and all that distance in a bumpy cab on London's crowded roads with the rod assaulting my insides at every bump would make it feel more like five thousand. He would not be so cruel.... would he?

“Tomorrow”, he added with a smirk. I pouted.

“That was mean!” I said accusingly.

“I think that all the ginger will be all used up by dinner based on the instruction booklet I read before you got up this morning”, he remarked. “But I could always add some more.”

No doubt about it, he was trying to kill me through sex!

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I was more or less recovered the following day when we made our way to East Smithfield, which turned out to be the main road leading east out of the City from the Tower itself. That ancient building always made my blood run cold as I thought of the many people, innocent and guilty, who had been done to death within its grim walls. It still loomed over the area as it had for some eight centuries now although I was pleased to see that Sir John Barry's recently-opened bascule/suspension bridge next to it seemed to be drawing as much as if not more attention. Tower Bridge was a piece of modern architecture that I actually liked.

I had expected the area to be poor quality housing as with much of the East End but it turned out that numbers 81 through to 111 were a run of medium-quality early Victorian houses at the Tower end, bordered to the east by an exceptionally ugly yellow-brick factory. The houses were all in an average state of repair and two had signs outside stating that they were 'To Let', one of which was number 95 next to the Rumanian diplomat's house.

The quality of the area was not improved by our having to meet Mr. Randall Holmes there, especially after the news that he had brought his brother the day before. Sherlock very pointedly held my hand as he approached, so tightly that it actually hurt, but I said nothing. He needed me right now and I loved him enough to overlook a little pain. A lot if truth be told. At least the lounge-lizard looked a lot more tired than usual; my love had told me that the pest's new wife was keeping him on a tight leash which was all to the good. Hopefully tight enough to throttle the vermin!

“This is not good, Sher...lock”, the unmitigated nuisance said, saving himself only narrowly from mentioning his brother's hated nickname. “The local police sent someone round just to check up on the house yesterday and the idiot actually questioned our foreign friend. The Rumanian ambassador has already put in a complaint.”

“Diplomats are regrettably if necessarily above the law”, Sherlock said, frowning, “but they cannot reasonably expect to not be questioned if a crime is taking place in their locality. They are immune only from being charged. At least Mr. Sebastian Gold should be happy that you are investigating his complaint.”

“Far from it!” his brother groused. “He was all for letting the matter drop but his brother Sylvester, who was only at the house for a few nights before sailing off to Ceylon or some such God-forsaken hole, complained to the local constable about being kept awake during his brief stopover so Mr. Sebastian felt obliged to tell the fellow what he himself had heard. He had not noticed any smells but he had heard banging from next door, the first floor he had thought.”

“Where did Mr. Sylvester Gold sleep?” Sherlock asked. His brother looked surprised at the question as was I.

“I cannot see what that has to do with anything”, his brother said. “But he did mention it in his statement. The basement; he has his own key and his brother was not even aware that he was there until the day of his departure as he keeps irregular hours and they do not really get on that well. Do you think....?”

“We need to see that basement”, Sherlock said firmly. “I assume that Mr. Sebastian Gold is at work just now. Does he keep servants in the house?”

“No”, his brother said. “He had a woman who comes in and does for him to keep the place clean, a Mrs. Briggs who lives down the road in the flats by the Tower. She comes in every morning around eleven but only does the basement when specifically asked. Why are you interested in that?”

Sherlock did not answer him but checked his watch before hurrying over to number 99. Like all the houses it had two front entrances, a main one and a smaller one for the basement accessed down a flight of stone steps behind a rusting black iron railing. Sherlock hurried down and tried the door then took something out of his pocket. His brother was barely into an objection before the door gave way (it always worried me how good a lock-picker my friend could be when needed) and he all but ran into the room.

The basement was much as expected; dirty and spectacularly ordinary. The three pieces of furniture were an old bed hard up against the left-hand wall, a dresser not far from it and a wash-stand on the far wall that had clearly not been used for at least a couple of days. 

“Who lives in number 103?” Sherlock asked his brother.

“A family called the Thomases”, his brother said. “Harmless enough; he works in the docks and she looks after their two children. They are away visiting a relative in Scotland and have been for the past eight days. I checked that out; the woman at 105 is keeping an eye on the place for them.”

“Interesting”, Sherlock said with a smile. “By the way, you did not tell me what Mr. Sebastian Gold does for a living?”

His questions were by this time clearly annoying his brother (which was all well and good!) but he still answered. 

“He works down in the docks”, he said. “He is a manager, which I suppose is how he can afford this place without having to rent rooms out.”

I had wondered about that. The house was small but had three floors, and the owner could easily have rented out at least the basement and still kept his privacy. This was all very myste....

“The case is solved,”

We both looked at Sherlock in surprise.

“How?” his brother asked at once. My friend smiled.

“Tomorrow you should send a team of men to search number 99 from top to bottom”, he told him. “You might inform the Rumanian ambassador, and perhaps also the American one, of your plans a short while beforehand in order that they do not get their feathers even more ruffled over their citizens being drawn into a criminal investigation.”

“What are they looking for?” his brother asked.

“If I told you that, then knowing you they would surely find it whether it was there or not!” Sherlock said, earning himself a scowl for that accurate observation. “John and I are attending one of his surgery functions tomorrow evening at Lady Hoveringham's house in Grosvenor Square, but if you care to meet us there I shall be in a position to tell all.”

I quietly cheered when his brother had that look of intense frustration on his face at my friend's teasing. Although judging from the glare that I got as he left, not quietly enough.

The fist-pump may have been pushing it. Perhaps.

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The following day was one of heavy rain, beating hard and fast against the Baker Street windows. Sherlock had gone out into the deluge (much against my wishes) in order to finalize his investigations and when he came back he looked like a drowned rat. I hurried to get him out of those wet clothes – no not for that, at least not this time – and soon had him dry, warm and relaxing in his dressing-gown, his permanently untameable locks nestling against my thigh as he lay on the couch. This was sheer domesticated bliss and I was the luckiest man ever to have it all to myself.

After a good dinner before leaving (Lady Hoveringham's events were renowned for small, fancy 'portions' that always failed to fill one up, and I had noted but obviously not commented on the sudden surfeit of bacon meals during Sherlock's stressful last few days), we dressed ourselves for the ordeal ahead. As always we had to start at least an hour ahead of our planned departure time as the sight of that beautiful man in formal clothes never failed to make me immediately want to get him out of them again and I was almost hyperventilating as I dragged him back to his room and took him with a muffled roar, again thankful that we had such distant and conveniently hard-of-hearing co-tenants.

_(I have been asked on several occasions to provide an actual map of the inside of 221B which I have decided against, but I shall say that there were three rooms on the ground-floor; the two regular-sized ones Rooms One and Two as well as the more recent Room Zero which had been created by Mrs. Malone for Mr. Malone, and was still in use from time to time despite its small size. Rooms Three and Four were on the first floor but on opposite sides of the house and neither lay directly beneath our own Room Five, the only one on the second floor. Visitors ascending the stairs passed near the door of Room Four only. I had always thought it a little strange that Mrs. Malone had not used the other suite of rooms on the second floor, which were currently occupied by Mr. and Mrs. Rockland but at the back of the house and a long way from our own rooms. But then with us, that was probably just as well!)_

We left barely five minutes late (good for us) and made it to Hoveringham House to be greeted by Lady Hoveringham herself. She was the first of the evening to give Sherlock's body a long and most predatory look and I moved instinctively closer to my man. Honestly, the woman was sixty and married with four children! Though I also knew that Sherlock enjoyed it when I got jealous and/or possessive and that it would add an edge to our love-making later that evening. Possibly even in an upstairs room here if we could find an empty one as I knew that my friend did not like her bullying husband one bit, an opinion with which I heartily concurred. He sat in the House of Lords and was famed for giving the sort of speeches that made his fellow members decide that they needed to be elsewhere as of five minutes ago.

Unfortunately our Happy Times would have to wait as the pestilential Mr. Randall Holmes was already at the house when we arrived and clearly impatient to speak with us. Sherlock, to my great pleasure, made sure to meet and greet all the important people first, brazenly ignoring his brother's foot-tapping and angry glares before finally leading us away to a side-room where we could talk undisturbed. Or at least undisturbed by people; whoever had chosen the décor for this room had clearly thought that magenta, sky blue and off-yellow would somehow work together. Victorian designers sometimes had a lot to answer for.

“I had six officers search that house from top to bottom”, the nuisance groused, “and they found nothing worse than an erotic magazine in the possession of Mr. Jehu Markland. For which his wife gave him some gyp but that apart, nothing. Sweet nothing!”

“That is good”, Sherlock said dryly. “Apart from the magazine which I am sure that you have 'confiscated', you found what I what I expected you to find.”

His brother looked at him in shock.

 _“What?”_ he spluttered. 

“I wished you to make a fuss of searching that house because I wished the culprit in this matter to think themselves in the clear”, Sherlock said. “Today, in between dodging the Good Lord's attempt to recreate the great flood, I discovered two things about that person. First, I found that they have an in-depth knowledge of numismatics. Second, I obtained proof that they have been creating fake coins.”

“I still do not see why coins and not notes”, I put in. 

Sherlock gave his brother one of those knowing smiles which I knew from experience annoyed him mightily. Mr. Randall Holmes huffed impatiently.

“I fully expected your men to find nothing at 99, East Smithfield”, he explained. “Indeed had you handed over _all_ the information at your command, I might have felt more inclined to help you. Take your men back to the area tomorrow and search the house next door, number 101. Inside you will find a small coining apparatus as well as sufficient chemicals to fake some of the most high-quality coins that I have ever had the pleasure of viewing.”

“How can you know that?” his brother demanded. 

Sherlock smiled.

“You withheld the small but critical fact that, while the company that employs Mr. Sebastian Gold does most of its business dealing in spices and related trade from the Far East, they run a most lucrative side-line. For a price they will ship small but highly-prized items, most usually stamps, books and coins, from anywhere along their routes. Transporting such items is a high-risk business; I believe one particularly rare stamp recently sold for almost a quarter of a million pounds sterling‡ recently simply because of a minor printing error in its manufacture. England is rich enough to have people who can afford not only to buy such items but to pay for the best in shipping and security.”

“Mr. Sylvester Gold, the sailor?” I asked. Sherlock shook his head.

“That unlucky gentleman is in some ways a victim here”, he said. “He has never worked for his brother and may well lose out on his occasional accommodation when the latter is rightly punished. Mr. Sebastian Gold on the other hand has acquired an in-depth knowledge of the coin-making process, and over many years has perfected the art of producing excellent copies. Books and stamps are hard to reproduce but a coin is so much easier and the recipient, having paid so much, would assume at least initially that what they had had fetched from halfway round the world was precisely what it seemed. Mr. Sebastian Gold was just waiting for a sizeable enough shipment that he could produce a fake copy of and then abscond to a new life elsewhere in the world where he could purchase a new identity, no questions asked.”

“You are guessing, Sher!” his brother scoffed. 

Sherlock fixed him with an icy glare. I was sure that the temperature in the room suddenly fell by several degrees and wondered if there was going to be blood. 'Wondered if' as in 'hoped desperately that'.

“Sorry”, the lounge-lizard said. “Sherlock.”

“Better!” my friend said heavily. “A sailor leads a somewhat irregular life so the brothers had an arrangement that Mr. Sylvester Gold had a key to the basement to use as and when he required. I did consider the possibility that he might seek to destroy his brother so as to inherit his wealth, but my research showed that the relationship between them was indeed strictly familial and that the sailor knew full well that his brother was leaving all his wealth to three female cousins rather than him.”

“It was Mr. Sebastian's bad luck that one of his brother's stopovers occurred at precisely the time that he was using his tools to create the fake set of coins that he hoped would set him up for life. The hammering woke our sailor up but he presumed that the noise was coming from next door as he could think of no reason why his own brother would be making such a racket. You will also remember that Mr. Sylvester's bed was on the side of the wall adjoining number 99 so he would have been more disposed to have thought that the sound was coming from there. He mentioned it to his brother on the day of his departure, who naturally had also heard a noise 'from next door'.”

“We would need proof for a second search”, Mr. Randall Holmes said dubiously.

“I thought that you might”, Sherlock said, “so I took the precaution of breaking into number 101 myself earlier today. I retrieved a pair of Mr. Sebastian Gold’s cuffs for you.”

“His cuffs?” I asked, confused.

Sherlock smiled and took a set of rather dirty white cuffs from his pocket. Laying them out on the coffee-table he then produced a miniature bourbon bottle from his other pocket.

“Bourbon?” I asked now even more confused. He shook his head.

“Diluted sulphuric acid”, he said. “I obtained it from a scientist friend of mine.”

He applied the clear liquid liberally all over the cuffs, which began to hiss and smoke. 

“The coining process creates minuscule zinc and copper filings”, Sherlock explained, “which shoot up when the fake coin is hammered out and embed themselves in the skin and clothing of the coiner. Sulphuric acid reacts with zinc, as you can see. He wore these old cuffs as added protection to cover the area between the gloves and the skin, meaning to dispose of all once he was done. Unfortunately I had to leave before I could find the gloves themselves as the cleaner arrived early. I am sure that if you told a judge that say a pair of cuffs had fallen out of Mr. Sebastian Gold’s laundry and had come into your possession, and you thereby had reason to suspect him guilty of creating false coin – our judiciary can have a variable reputation at times but I believe that you would get your warrant.”

He did. And soon after he got Mr. Sebastian Gold who instead of the incomparable wealth he had been angling for got a lengthy spell at Her Majesty’s Pleasure. Indeed he was fortunate to get just that as creating false coin was still a capital offence. Sherlock, very fairly in my opinion, sent the judge a letter stating that the coins created had been for individual profit rather than general circulation, and that surely helped to save the fellow's miserable neck.

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We managed to find a small unused bedroom in which we spent a pleasant time before we resumed the party, him with a smirk a mile wide and me with a cock-ring, a plug, and an even bigger smirk. Though the cab-ride back to Baker Street was…. uncomfortable.

All right it was sheer bloody agony! But when what was left of me limped up to our rooms (yes, with help) and the man I loved then spent half an hour applying the healing unguent, I was in absolute heaven!

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_Notes:_   
_† Victorian term for a meteorite._   
_‡ At least £27 million ($33 million) at 2020 prices, probably much more given how the values of such items have outstripped inflation._

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	10. Interlude: Weekend Work

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 1900\. Sometimes, the underlings get their revenge.

_[Narration by Miss Katherine Howell]_

I took a deep breath before opening the door to my unpleasant superior's office. Mr. Randall Holmes was one of those Men who made me glad to have taken that self-defence course; a fistful of keys in the right place and he had gotten the message even if he had glared at me ever since. That and the fact he always reeked of that terrible cologne.

The rat was just closing his notebook, the tall pile in the Out tray showing that he had finished the last of those stories from his mother's friends (even I with fifty years knowledge of life had blanched at the one with the recently-crowned king working his way through all the ladies _and_ gentlemen along the road leading up to his palace – 'Coronation Street', that had been it).

The smarmy git poured himself a large gin and glared triumphantly at the pile of papers.

“I thought that you might be saving that until later”, I said reprovingly.

“Why?” he said, sipping happily at the expensive gin (claimed for as a work expense, of course). “I am finally, _finally_ finished with those dreadful scripts.”

I knew that he had never liked me, although had he known that I was regularly tattling on his evil dealings against his cute and ador.... younger brother Sherlock, he would have disliked me even more. Let alone the fact that I also reported to dear Muriel.

I smiled knowingly. I could see just when he began to feel uneasy at that.

“What?” he said testily. “You did say that those were the last scripts that needed checking.”

 _“Did I?”_ I said with what was obviously fake innocence. “I believe that what I actually said was that they were the last ones that needed checking _that had come in so far this week.”_

It was arguably bad of me to have enjoyed the sight of him shuddering like that. Then again it was him, so not arguable at all! Ha ha!

“They just delivered the next lot”, I said. “Not the last by the way; there are at least two more to come. I am off for the day so you can have them all to yourself. Oh and before I forget, Mr. Jones said that now he is in charge here you are not to claim for any more gin on expenses, starting from this morning. Have a nice weekend, _sir!”_

Even I was surprised at the language I heard as I made my escape, and I had grown up with four elder brothers!

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	11. Case 295: The Seven Dials Mystery ☼

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 1900\. Gentlemen tend not to like change in their well-ordered lives, so when Sherlock's and John's favourite barber decamps from Baker Street to Seven Dials, over two miles away and on the edge of Covent Garden, the duo continue to use him. Fortunately this means that they are able to help when someone takes exception to word being spread about their postiche!

_[Narration by Doctor John Watson, M.D.]_

This was one of those many small cases which seemed trivial in itself, yet was a matter of life (or at least business survival) to the gentleman whom we helped. Once again Sherlock championed the 'little people' against the so-called great and the good who, far too often, were not good at all.

Our belated arrival in Baker Street back in 1886 had necessitated many changes, one of which had been for us to find a new barber as the old one that we had used in Cramer Street was retiring just as we were leaving that area, a double annoyance as his shop was about equally near to both our old and new addresses. However he did recommend the son of a friend who worked at a place in our new road, so it was to the dreadfully-named 'Hair Today' that we went. Mercifully it was better than its name had suggested, although Mr. St. Clair (or Andy as he preferred to be known) always shook his head when having to deal with Sherlock's unruly thatch. I was just grateful to still have all my own hair, especially as Andy had assured me that having nearly reached 'a certain age' I was much more likely to see it go grey rather than have it fall out.

Although after last night, that might still happen. How the hell had Sherlock managed to obtain a fireman's costume?

Last year Andy had told us that he had saved enough money to set up his own shop and would be moving to the famous Seven Dials, near Covent Garden. Naturally we wished to continue using him, even though it now required a cab-ride. He also did the hair of Mr. Lucifer Garrick and his lover Mr. Jackson-Giles; Sherlock's cousin unlike us had benefited from the move as he lived in the next street to the barber's new shop.

We arrived at the shop that day to find Andy looking strangely down. Sherlock immediately asked him why.

“One of your brother's Mr. Carlyon's men, sir”, Andy said with a sigh. “Major Bellini.”

“The Italian popinjay?” Sherlock said. “I would have thought that someone so eminently superior to us English would have demanded that his own barber come all the way from sunny Italy to attend on him.”

He was right as it happened. In those dark days before the pan-European war that everyone pretty much knew was going to start somewhere or other, the position of the political basket-case called Italy was, as the saying goes, that of the prettiest girl at the ball. She was ostensibly part of the Triple Alliance with Germany and Austria-Hungary but everyone suspected (correctly as things turned out) that she might be persuaded to switch sides for a large enough inducement. Hence the presence of an Italian officer in Sherlock's brother's barracks – a presence that General Carlyon Holmes had threatened to end permanently on more than one occasion by burying the annoying foreigner somewhere, dead or alive!

I had met the Italian major, and I have to say that 'Mario' more than lived down to all the stereotypes of his countrymen. His overblown uniform – seriously, feathers? – matched his overblown nature, and he was always boasting of his military achievements which were pretty much non-existent unless one counted being first up to claim the credit for other men's work. He always reminded everyone he met that he was a _Piedmontese†_ , not just an Italian. I had thought longingly of several poisons in my doctor's bag which would have swiftly dispatched him, and of course had immediately been on the end of a warning glance from the resident mind-reader.

“What is he upset about?” I asked. “Apart from the fact that us lesser mortals persist in sharing this world with him.”

“He says that I told everyone about his postiche, sirs.”

We both looked at him in confusion.

“He had an acting role somewhere?” I asked.

Andy chuckled.

“Postiche, not pastiche sir”, he said. “It's what they call a wig in France, and since he comes from near that part of the world I suppose that's what he calls it. I'd call it Fido myself; even I'd never have given him something that bad!”

I had long decided that if the worst came to the worst and I did lose my hair, I would rather go for the LeStrade option and have my head shaved rather than wear a hair-piece – or even a postiche. I had seen far too many 'Fidos' in my time, some of which had looked ready to leap off their wearer's heads and make a bid for freedom! Although Mr. Jackson-Giles's close-cropped black hair always looked neat, even if the face beneath it was far too often leering at _my_ Sherlock!

“This sounds most concerning”, Sherlock said, smiling at me for some strange reason. “After you have seen John and done what can be done with my thatch, we shall investigate this matter for you.”

The hairdresser sighed with relief.

“Thanks, sir.”

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We decided to walk back to Baker Street rather than take a constitutional later, as the forecast was for heavy rain that afternoon. We were almost home when Sherlock spoke.

“I think that this seemingly trivial matter of our hairdresser is more serious that it looks.”

I looked at him in surprise.

“How can you know that?” I asked.

He gestured ahead to outside 221B, and I groaned. Two carriages, one of which had the Italian flag displayed at all four corners of it. The other, even worse, was that of a certain lounge-lizard. 

Sherlock smiled.

“I think that for once even Randall can wait”, he said. “We shall send a telegram to see if Miss St. Leger can work her usual magic, and while we are waiting we shall take an early luncheon at our favourite restaurant.”

I smiled at the thought of the obnoxious lounge-lizard having to wait.

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We were on the dessert – chocolate cake; even better Sherlock kindly let me have his as he did not like it much – when a boy arrived with some papers. Sherlock tipped him generously then read through what he had brought.

“I thought so”, he smiled. “It is not just a bald pate that can be covered with a wig – or even a postiche!”

Thus having unfairly made me curious he would say no more. Still, at least I had the cake!

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There was a further surprise waiting for us when we reached Baker Street – Randall and our Italian visitor were sat on the bench in the corridor, very clearly under the glowering eye of Mrs. Rockland who was watching them through the open door of her room. I noted that both men were at the extreme far end of the bench from that look, as I too would have been. 

Sherlock sighed.

“All right”, he said, “what did you do _this_ time, Randall?”

The obnoxious lounge-lizard drew himself up haughtily.

 _”I_ did nothing!” he said. “Your landlady clearly misinterpreted Mr. Franco's friendly greeting.”

“Any friendlier and Mrs. Franco won't have to worry about having more children!” Mrs. Rockland called out sharply.

I chuckled at the discomfiture of our visitors and led the way up to our rooms. 

“You need to do something, Sher... lock”, the (English) pest said. “That stupid hairdresser of yours has been putting round stories that this gentleman's cousin, here on an important diplomatic visit, wears a wig.”

Sherlock eyed him coolly. His brother edged perceptibly further away. I increased my hopes for imminent violence and prepared to look hard the other way.

“Bearing in mind the 'quality' of the average Victorian hair-piece”, my friend said coldly, “I think that even the dimmest constable in the Metropolitan Police Service could 'detect' one. Maybe even the insufferable Sergeant Whitefeather, although perhaps that is pushing it. Are you sure that this has nothing to do with Major Bellini insisting that as an honoured visitor to these shores he should not have to pay to visit a barber's shop?”

The lounge-lizard shot an annoyed look at his Italian colleague, who just shrugged his shoulders at him.

“Major Bellini insists on a full apology”, the lounge-lizard said. “He is quite prepared to quit England if he is not satisfied.”

“That is not a problem”, Sherlock said calmly.

His brother looked at him in amazement.

 _”Not a problem?”_ he echoed. “You want to upset our friends with the current European situation?”

“If our 'friends' resort to inciting matters like this just so they can engender a rift with the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland”, Sherlock said, “then yes.”

His brother stared at him in confusion. Mr. Franco coughed pointedly.

“You are guessing, Mr. Holmes”, he said silkily.

Sherlock waved a piece of paper at him.

“A telegram from Rome”, he said, “instructing you to tell the major that the current government wishes to abandon moves towards any friendship with our Nation and for you to engender some sort of crisis that will give them a reason to pull you out. I am sure that the 'Times' would love to get their hands on this.”

His brother made to rise and move towards the telegram, only to realize that Sherlock had his gun out. He went deathly pale.

“Oh please, Randall”, Sherlock said coldly. “Please add one final mistake to your long litany, as your removal from this world would give me _great_ pleasure. I am sure that Mother would be at worst only Irked, and Muriel would restrict herself to a mild sniff before claiming on your life-insurance.”

He shot a look at the Italian.

“You and the major will both be recalled to Italy today as a matter of urgency”, he said, “and you will be out of this country by nightfall. Be assured that should you fail to do so, or by some evil mischance try to return, then this telegram will be sent to the 'Times' for their use – free of charge.”

The Italian huffed but made a quick exit. So did the pest of a lounge-lizard, keeping a wary eye on Sherlock as he did so. We were well rid of them. 

“Disgusting”, I muttered once they had gone. “Italians!”

“At least they gave us the Roman Empire for all its good and ills”, he said. “Which reminds me, it has been nearly a month since the lusty centurion drilled the recalcitrant auxiliary into shape......”

I was already at my bedroom door. Hot damn!

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Postscriptum: Sadly our foreign friends joined the ranks of those who underestimated Sherlock, and the 'Times' had a rather interesting story the following day as a result. Both men then quickly left the country, although some pickpocket relieved Major Bellini of his wallet which, by some strange alignment of the fates, found its way to a certain hairdressing salon in Seven Dials. How odd!

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_Notes:_   
_† An area traditionally mostly in what is not Italy but also covering some adjoining areas of France. The capital was (and still is) Turin. It's rulers had inherited the island of Sardinia and had used that to successfully push through Italian unification. Turin briefly became the Italian capital but this was later moved first to Florence and then Rome._

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	12. Case 296: The Adventure Of The Evened Odds

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 1900\. Someone is seemingly not for the high jump as Mr. Perseus Jackson, recently admitted to the Olympian Club thanks to Sherlock's efforts, comes to the detective with a concern over his fellow member Mr. Ares Jones.

_[Narration by Mr. Sherlock Holmes, Esquire]_

At the start of last year John and I had been involved in the matter of Mr. Perseus Jackson's ultimately successful quest to join the Olympian Club (The Adventure Of The Olympian Quest) despite the machinations of some of its less scrupulous associates. The young gentleman had been fulsome in his thanks and now he was back with a somewhat unusual request.

“I know that so many of the things you investigate start off as not much and end up as nothing”, he said, “but this is... sort of odd.”

“How may we be of assistance?” I asked.

“It concerns one of the Olympians, Mr. Ares Jones”, he said. “Very like his namesake, always out to stir up trouble of one sort or another. He has two sons, naturally called Deimos and Phobos, and one of the servants of the club told me that they were chatting the other day in secret.”

“Chatting in a gentleman's club in London within earshot of a servant seems quite unwise”, I observed, “although I suppose that the Olympian might be safer than most. What did they say?”

“Unfortunately they kept their voices low so he could hardly hear anything that they said”, Mr. Jackson said. “The only thing he could make out was that they were talking about someone called Uri who, they said, was a jumper. It did not make much sense to me, but I decided to see if you could make anything of it.”

“I know what they were talking about”, John said, to my surprise. “Raymond Ewry, the American athlete. There was an article about him in one of my medical magazines; he started his life in a wheelchair suffering from the dreaded polio but has quite literally worked himself fit and is set to compete at the Olympic Games in Paris this month. A most remarkable achievement.”

I might have made some snarky remark there about someone reading the sports as well as the society pages but my love had been so wonderful and so supportive these past few weeks, especially after the incident with Mycroft's destruction of my room at home, that I refrained. Instead I thought for a moment.

“Why were Mr. Jones's sons in the club in the first place?” I asked. “I thought that the Olympians banned all but full members from its grounds.”

“That is true”, Mr. Jackson said, “but during the month in which the ancient Olympic Games took place, the grown sons of full members are allowed temporary access. I doubt that either of them would be considered for full membership otherwise the place would be crawling with the Council's offspring, and besides they are not really that pleasant. I myself think that we should have more members but I am in a minority over that opinion.”

“Have you any idea why Mr. Jones or his sons might be concerned with Mr. Ewry?” I asked. Our visitor shook his head.

“Apart from the fact that we are all Olympians of one sort or another, I do not know”, he said.

I looked at him curiously.

“I think that I also need physical descriptions of these two young demi-gods”, I said.

“Phobos is a bit of a runt, weedy and scruffy”, our visitor said. “Deimos is quite tall but spindly; there is nothing to him. They are twins, so I suppose they are whatever is the exact opposite of identical. I am afraid that character-wise both are rotten to the core, like their father.”

I thought for a moment.

“I can see one possibility”, I said, “but I shall have to call in an expert who may or may not be disposed to help me. If you leave us your card Mr. Jackson, we shall keep you informed of any developments.”

“Do you think that there will be some?” he asked, placing a card on our table.

“I think it likely”, I said. “Thank you for bringing us this case.”

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Once our visitor had gone John looked at me uncertainly.

“Is this one of your 'friends' who would not welcome my presence?” he asked.

I knew that despite his apparent acceptance of this sort of thing it still galled him that he could not come with me at times, especially so soon after my foolishness at Tonbridge. He really was too good for me.

“Fortunately Mr. Arquebus is an ardent admirer of your works and he will welcome your presence”, I said. “Indeed given the sensitivity of the matter at hand your being there may even make him more likely to help that would otherwise be the case.”

He looked at me curiously.

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There was seemingly nothing unusual about the small and almost decrepit betting-shop on the edge of the East End. The dirty window with 'Wolfram Arquebus, Turf Accountant' across it was in need of a good clean if not total replacement, and I knew that John was uneasy that I had not allowed him to bring his gun. There was no physical danger here I was sure, but he still did not like it and stuck closer to me than usual. That he cared so much for me despite my recent foolishness warmed me far more than the weak May sunshine.

I sent a card in and, as I had hoped, we were swiftly ushered through the raised counter and out the back. This looked little better than the front, and even although I knew it for a fact I found it still hard to credit that the scruffy and unprepossessing bespectacled gentleman in his mid-fifties who was waiting for us was one of the richest men in London Town.

“Mr. Holmes and his estimable scribe!” Mr. Arquebus beamed. “Welcome to my humble abode. I shall have drinks served, then we can talk.”

I noted and when it came was pleased that he had remembered coffee for me, and I also noted that the plate held a number of chocolate biscuits whose days were surely numbered. I waited until the servants had gone before I set about my business.

“This is a little delicate even by my usual standards”, I began. “I know that one of the reasons for your success, sir, is that you carefully monitor any unusual activity in betting patterns, particularly as there are some in the criminal fraternity who see the world of gambling as one in which they can rig the game and make easy money.”

“Indeed”, Mr. Arquebus said. “Assuming that I did undertake such a Herculean task I am sure that you could see the obvious problem, namely where to draw the line. How many wagers on a certain event and in a certain direction would constitute 'unusual activity'?”

“I am thinking in particular of the Olympian Club”, I said.

“I know of them”, Mr. Arquebus said, frowning slightly. “A cut above the usual criminality one normally finds in the clubs of this metropolis; had they not several politicians and top policemen in their pockets I suspect that their activities would have been curtailed by now. I also understand that a gentleman whom you helped join a while back, Mr. Jackson, is making a name for himself in reducing those activities from within which can only be for the general good, especially as the 'Times' is currently pressing the police to do more in that area.”

“I have cause to believe that some of the club members see the forthcoming Olympic Games in Paris as an opportunity to make money without Mr. Jackson being aware”, I said. “May I be permitted to know if there has been any unusual activity in that sphere?”

He looked at me uncertainly, then nodded.

“Yes”, he said. “Quite cleverly done; had I not contacts with several others in the business I would not have spotted it. A large number of medium-sized sums have been wagered on an American gentleman called Mr. Irving Baxter. That is, I feel, rather worrying.”

“Why is that a concern?” John asked. “If you do not mind me asking?”

Mr. Arquebus looked hard at me. I could guess the answer.

“Although my knowledge of American athletics is somewhere between minimal and non-existent”, I said, “I would wager that Mr. Baxter is a clear _second_ favourite when it comes to who is likely to win in certain events in Paris. Mr. Ewry is by some distance the best – but if say an 'accident' were to befall him and he failed to make the Games, those betting on Mr. Baxter would have won their bets on much longer odds than was merited in a reduced field.”

“We are allowed to make deductions if a favourite withdraws or does not start”, Mr. Arquebus said, “and those could be as much as twelve and a half per cent for someone with odds as relatively short as Mr. Baxter's, but we would still lose heavily given the amount of money that has been wagered on him. If I were Mr. Ewry and I knew of this, I would be very nervous.”

I frowned at that.

“We cannot mount a twenty-four hour guard on the poor fellow until he has done his last event”, I said, “so some other means of protecting him must be arranged. Mr. Arquebus, I am not a betting man so pardon my ignorance in this next question. These wagers that have been levied on Mr. Baxter – would the people be entitled to withdraw them at all?”

“No”, Mr. Arquebus said. “And Mr. Baxter is entered for more than one event.”

I did not see the relevance of that but John suddenly spoke up.

“Some, or many of those bets are accumulators, are they not?” he asked.

Mr. Arquebus beamed at him.

“You are as sagacious as you are skilled at writing yours and Mr. Holmes's adventures together”, he said. “Yes. _That_ is indeed the matter at hand.”

I looked across at my friend, uncomprehending.

“Say the fellow making the bet was offered six to one on Mr. Baxter winning a single event”, he explained. “But if he wagered on _all three_ standing jumps then he would get far better odds, six to one three times over or around two hundred to one.”

Mr. Arquebus nodded.

“I offered one hundred and fifty to one on such an unlikely occurrence”, he said, “and one of my colleagues most unwisely gave five hundred to one on a rather large sum. If what you say is true Mr. Holmes, we could be very badly hit.”

“I think that we need to see Mr. Baxter”, I said. “If he is willing to co-operate in a slight subterfuge then all may still be well. Thank you for your time today, sir, and we shall of course keep you apprised of developments.”

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We were fortunate in that a number of America athletes had chosen to come to England for a few months before crossing to Paris, and that those included both the athletes in question. I managed to arrange to meet Mr. Irving Baxter in a small restaurant not far from the American Embassy and explained the situation to him. He was a tall, gangly youth who did not look his twenty-four years of age, but he was pleasant enough and clearly surprised by what I had to tell him.

“Sad to say we get that sort of thing back in the States, sir”, he said. “I've been offered money to 'throw' events before and I know some of my friends have too.”

“This, I am afraid, may be a more direct means of influencing matters”, I said. “The men behind this scheme are, I believe, prone to violence in order to achieve their ends, and they would be prepared to inflict serious injury on your compatriot Mr. Ewry.”

The young fellow's face clouded.

“Ray and I may be from different colleges”, he said stoutly, “but we are Americans first and foremost. These people must be stopped!”

“Short of mounting a twenty-four hour guard on your compatriot that would be difficult if not impossible”, I said. “Now, the three events that you are both competing in take place next month and I would ask for your help in this matter.”

“If I do beat Ray it will be in a fair fight”, the fellow said. “I would never wear a medal that had been won through dishonour; I could not live with myself for such a thing. What do you need me to do?”

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A couple of days later we were distracted by a visit from my brother Carl. Or at least from what was left of him; he looked terrible!

“How is Danny?” I asked innocently.

He glared at me. Even that effort was clearly a lot for him.

“We went to the theatre last night”, he sighed. “Ye Gods, what an experience!”

“Was it a bad play?” John asked.

“I have no idea”, Carl sighed. “Once we were in our box he began jerking me off, and the curtain was not the only thing rising! And the horny bastard had actually brought a wash-kit with him, so once he was done he pulled my trousers down and cleaned me up, then blew me again!”

“The young are terrible these days”, I sympathized. “No regard for their _elders_ and betters. You will not be doing that again, of course.”

He blushed fiercely.

“We are going again tonight”, he said, so quietly that I could barely hear him.

I just looked at him.

“Shut up!”

Come on, I _tried_ not to smirk! I really did!

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The following day we were back at the decrepit booking-shop with a clearly pleased Mr. Arquebus.

“A most excellent move, Mr. Holmes”, he said as he looked at the article between us. “It engenders uncertainty which, as we both know, is no friend to the punter.”

The article on top of the newspaper's sports page concerned a recent and unfortunate injury to an American athlete who had been visiting London prior to moving on to Paris for the Olympic Games. Mr. Irving Baxter had fallen down some stairs and had been ordered to refrain from any unnecessary movement for at least a full month. He was expected to make a full recovery fairly soon but, the writer opined, this considerably reduced his chances in the forthcoming Olympics.

“We have had several people suddenly coming in and asking if they can indeed withdraw their bets because of this development”, Mr. Arquebus smiled. “They were, sadly, all disappointed.”

“If one tries to 'scam' a system then that is the risk one runs”, I said unsympathetically. “Mr. Baxter is of course fine; I have arranged for him to continue training in secret so that he can still be prepared for the event. Although given that Mr. Ewry has consistently outperformed him in the past, I am afraid that his chances in the standing events are still not good.”

“I still wish him well though”, Mr. Arquebus said. “His decency has likely saved me and my fellow bookmakers much money.”

He looked expectantly at me.

“I have found this matter diverting in itself”, I said, “so I will levy no charges. However, I think that it would be good if you and your friends give at least some of the money that you will be making out of this to Mr. Baxter as an anonymous donation, for his nobility of character and his assistance in this matter.”

“It shall be done”, the bookmaker promised.

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“I have noticed that you yourself do not usually gamble”, I said to John as we headed back to Baker Street.

“Why would I?” he smiled. “I have already won the lottery of life when I won you.”

That someone still called Mr. Legendary Emotional Constipation by his brother could come out with things like that straight off – I may have sniffed somewhat manfully.

“Well, I shall make one wager”, I said. “I foresee a long afternoon in with Mrs. Malone being told not to let anyone come up, during which I wager that you will have great enjoyment in removing the panties that I am currently wearing.”

He gasped as I flashed the merest glimpse of lace at him.

“The white ones!” he managed. “Oh Lord above!”

“I rather think you will be the one above, as you make me yours again”, I said. “What are we waiting for?”

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We did not wait long upon our return to Baker Street. And the panties did not survive the day!

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Postscriptum: Mr. Ewry would win all three standing jumps – long, triple and high – in both Paris and St. Louis (1904), and also the standing long and high jumps in London (1908) where the standing triple was not contested. He did not contest the other two events in Stockholm in 1912, their last appearance before they too were withdrawn from the schedule, never to reappear. Mr. Baxter who was runner-up in all three disciplines in Paris did however strike gold by winning the pole vault and (regular) high jump. He wrote me a very nice letter of thanks for the anonymous donation that someone had sent him, which had enabled him to put a deposit down on a house back in the United States.

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	13. Case 297: The Adventure Of The Dashing Hero

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 1900\. One of the two most requested of our previously unpublished cases, the affair of the Abernetty family and how far the parsley sank into the butter. Sherlock at his best – and from John's viewpoint, also his worst!

_[Narration by Doctor John Watson, M.D.]_

It was typical of my friend that after the conclusion to this case involving a certain lying, conniving, sneaky, devious, underhand, manipulative consulting detective, Sherlock apologized profusely and promised me that I should not have to include it amongst the adventures that I wrote up for our readers. However, considering that it was the second most requested among all our unpublished cases I felt that I really had to. Besides, with the passage of time I have (just about) forgiven him for his lying, conniving, sneaky, devious, underhand, manipulative actions. It took me some time but he could be very persuasive when the need arose even if he needed three whole days, and me a further two to recover!

Yes, there was chocolate. 

Yes, cake _and_ sweets.

All right, there was sex as well.

No, I am _not_ that predictable.

Shut up!

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It was just under a year since Sherlock had solved the case of our friend Wilson the district messenger, and it was that small matter which was to lead to this much more famous and originally unpublished case. The reader may remember that as well as assisting Wilson into a post at the British Museum where his keenness and hard work had since earned him a deserved bonus, Sherlock had also secured a house for him, his wife and their young family which consisted of two stepbrothers and one son and which had since been joined by a daughter (Cleopatra Berenice Selene, sigh). My friend had even secured work for the two step-brothers and it was one of them who brought us this case, to wit Mr. Lysander Theseus Pericles Wilson.

Apart from his youth Mr. Lysander Wilson was the very epitome of the English butler, I thought, as the young fellow sat in the famous fireside chair in Baker Street. Despite being only a few years his junior he was nothing like his stepbrother; he was blond, of medium height and perfectly self-possessed as only a good servant can be. The fact that he had brought a copy of my latest book detailing several of the cases since Sherlock's return – _with revised notes!_ – showed very good taste, compounded by the fact he also had the latest edition of the 'Strand' magazine with the final instalment of our fateful (and nearly fatal) adventure at Thor Bridge in it. 

“I can see by the expression on the doctor's face that he does not consider you have given us much to go on”, Sherlock smiled. “A small piece of herbage dutifully following the laws laid down by the great Sir Isaac Newton – it seems quite natural. But let us go through the sequence of events such as they are and see what we can see. First tell us about where you work.”

“As you may know my former employers, the Pendragons, decided last year to emigrate to the United States and left this spring”, our visitor said. “Fortunately Lord Pendragon had been pleased with my work and had asked around his friends and relations to see if any of them had anything suitable for me. He was a distant cousin to the late Mr. Silas Abernetty whose butler had just retired, and he very kindly recommended me to that gentleman. I was accepted and, very fortunately as it turned out, Mr. Abernetty took me on for three years last December. He died barely a month later, as you may have read in the paper.”

“You were as deserving as well as fortunate”, Sherlock said. “Lord Pendragon had a reputation for being one of the harshest and most demanding of masters, and for him to recommend you was high praise indeed especially as many would have considered you young for your post.”

“He was harsh, sir, but he was fair”, Mr. Wilson said equably. “When I left he gave me a most generous bonus, and the other servants got what they deserved for their work; It was the word among us at the time that Hammond – his steward – had been involved in some sharp practice and he duly got nothing, whereas all the maids were given what for them were must have been huge sums of money.”

“Tell us about your new employers”, Sherlock said.

“The Abernettys live at 'Whitsun House' out near Alexandra Palace”, he said. “It is a most exclusive area and the family is quite rich. As I said Mr. Abernetty died in January of pneumonia; he was just over seventy years of age. The people there now are his grand-daughter Wilhelmina who has just turned twenty years of age, Mr. Abernetty's niece Mrs. Barlow, and her husband. Neither of those two are his blood relatives; Mrs. Barlow was married to Mr. Abernetty's nephew Mr. Gareth but he drowned in a boating accident. She and Mr. Barlow ran the household even before Mr. Abernetty passed; I understand that they are guardians to the young lady. The Barlows are harsh but fair in their own way, I suppose.”

I sensed that his good nature was making him rather more generous towards his employers than they may have merited.

“Were there any suspicious circumstances around old Mr. Abernetty's death?” I asked. Mr. Wilson shook his head.

“The poor gentleman had had one problem or another on and off for the past five years”, he said. “His doctor was frankly surprised that he had made it that far. He had indulged in many foods that were bad for him, especially chocolate.”

I looked sharply across at Sherlock. There were the definite beginnings of one of his annoying not-smirks there! And that innocent expression did not fool me for a moment!

“What happened to young Miss Abernetty's parents?” he inquired, not smirking far too loudly in my opinion.

“Mr. Abernetty's only son William was in the Army and died in that war against the Boers in the early eighties”, Mr. Wilson said. “The first one I should say, given the mess down there just now. I believe that his wife and the late Mr. Abernetty did not get on before that and it worsened when she remarried within months of Mr. William's death and chose to stay in Africa. Young Miss Abernetty was sent back to England as she was then heiress to the estate; I do not think that her mother objected.”

 _Or she was paid off_ , I thought not at all cattily. Sherlock gave one of his annoying nods then looked at our guest thoughtfully.

“Do you happen to know who is next in line to inherit the estate after Miss Abernetty?” he asked. 

Mr. Wilson looked surprised at that question as was I, but answered quickly enough.

“Mrs. Balcombe – the cook – mentioned that there is a cousin living somewhere in the North of England, sirs”, he said. “She did not know where but she did say that she was sure he was the only surviving family, so I would presume that it must be him. He has never visited the house and was not even invited to the funeral; she told me that Mrs. Barlow was not overly enamoured of the fellow.”

“Curious”, Sherlock said. “What is _your_ opinion of young Miss Abernetty, pray? She is thus far only a name to us.”

The young man blushed.

“I have only seen her a few times”, he said. “She is not really your typical modern teenager I would say; blonde, thin, learnéd and very quiet. She keeps to her own rooms and does not go out. Mrs. Barlow is, ahem, rather strict. She is of course not of my class.”

I wondered at that last remark. Was it that the lady was not someone that he should have thought of being attached to, yet he actually was?

“So Mrs. Barlow – or her husband – runs the estate for her on her own?” Sherlock asked, with another annoying nod.

“Mrs. Balcombe believes that the estate was left jointly to her and the family lawyer to run”, the butler said, extracting a notebook. “But to the events that bring me here. I should explain that I have a small room in the servants' quarters at the house. It is not locked as I have little there worth taking; besides I have lodgings some three streets away.”

“At what address?” Sherlock asked.

“Number ninety-nine, Connecticut Crescent, sirs.”

“Pray continue.”

“Last Thursday someone entered my room at the house and looked through my few possessions.”

“How could you know that?” I asked. He blushed again.

“I am an ardent admirer of your works, sir”, he said to me, looking far too ashamed for exhibiting such excellent taste (and that had better not be another not-smirk from someone in the vicinity!). “I always arrange my 'Strand' magazines in order of publication and I keep a bookmark to show where I am up to. That particular day I returned to my room and found that not only were the books out of sequence but that the bookmark had fallen out. I found it under a chair on the other side of the room, one that I hardly ever sit in. I would not have mentioned it but I know from your writings that small things are sometimes important. This was the day before the incident of the butter.”

“Go on”, Sherlock said.

“The next day Toni – Antoinette, the maid – took up tea along with some bread-and-butter for young Miss Abernetty”, he said. “It was about three o' clock in the afternoon and she or Mrs. Barlow always sent for cakes or refreshments of some sort around that time. Toni took them to Mrs. Barlow's room which is next door to Miss Abernetty's. When she came back she told us that Mrs. Barlow and her husband had been having 'a blazing row' and that the lady had told her to come back for the tray in an hour or so. She did – unusually the tray had been left outside for her to collect – then returned to the kitchen where Mrs. Balcombe and I were taking tea. Miss Abernetty had eaten the bread and used some of the butter, but the rest of the butter was partly melted. The parsley had sunk right into it.”

“In just an hour?” I said, surprised.

“That was what was so odd”, our visitor said. “No-one thought much about it at the time however because of the fair.”

“What fair?” Sherlock asked. The man blushed.

“Sorry”, he said. “Tolly did warn me when I said I might approach you that I should not ramble. The next day there was to be a fair held in the palace grounds. Mrs. Barlow had promised that we could all go in the afternoon if we had got everything done in the morning. However that morning Mr. Barlow came down and told us that his wife had 'moved out for some time alone'. Of course we all thought that that was our day off gone west, but he said that if we prepared him a cold tea then we could go after all as he would welcome the peace and quiet. Naturally no-one argued.”

“Naturally”, Sherlock smiled. “Two more questions if I may. Is young Miss Abernetty seeing anyone at this moment in time?”

“Not a chance with those two watchdogs!” the butler said fervently. “But with her wealth I would expect lots of people to want to marry her. Especially if they could do so before she comes of age and get control of her fortune.”

“I see”, Sherlock said. “Also, did Mrs. Barlow take any of the servants with her when she left?”

Our guest frowned.

“Now that you mention it, that was an odd thing”, he said. “Tom – Mr. Thompson, Mr. Barlow's valet – went with her along with her own maid Judith. I thought that perhaps he was not getting along with his master and took his opportunity to get out, although he had not said anything to me about any problems and he is one of the most affable fellows around. I believe the Barlows have a place in Chingford up in Essex, so I would guess that she went there.”

“Indeed”, Sherlock said. “Your case is rather more complicated than some rapidly-sinking herbage, Mr. Wilson. Thank you for bringing it to our attention. We shall undertake to investigate it – but I should warn you, do not mention your visit here to anyone in Whitsun House. Not even to those you think that you may be able to trust.”

“I promise”, the butler said.

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To my surprise Sherlock did not seem to actually _do_ anything in pursuit of the Abernetty Case over the next few days. Indeed the next development was a further visit from Mr. Wilson precisely one week later.

“It is my half-day”, he explained, “and I did not wish to attract suspicion by trying to contact you sooner.”

“What has happened?” Sherlock asked.

“Nothing at the house”, our visitor said, “but I found something when I was tidying my room the other day. Do you remember how I said that some of my magazines had been put back out of order?”

“Yes?” Sherlock said.

“I was looking for a particular story and I realized that some of them were missing”, he said. One from each of four stories had been removed. The weird thing was that when I looked for them, I found them almost immediately. Someone had placed them in an empty drawer in my wardrobe. But I do not see why.”

Sherlock wandered back over to the window and was now gazing out onto the street. He had done that just after the butler arrived, I thought. I wondered why.

“Which stories were moved?” he asked without turning round. The butler took out and opened his notebook.

“Part Three of 'The Red-Headed League'. And Part Two of three stories; 'Black Peter', 'The Hound Of The Baskervilles' and 'The Empty House'.

I was becoming skilled by this time at reading Sherlock's countenance. Though there was not even the slightest twitch I somehow knew that he had gathered something from that list. 

“Make a note of those, doctor”, he said, returning to join us. “They may be important. Tell me Mr. Wilson, would either of the Barlows have had cause to enter your room for any reason?”

“No, sir. Though as the master and mistress of the house for now they have the right to do so if they wish. As I said, I keep nothing there except for my books.”

“Why do you keep your books there, rather than at your lodgings?” I asked.

“One of my fellow lodgers is, I am afraid, a touch light-fingered”, he said blushing a little. “The only thing of any real value that I do own is a watch that I inherited from my father – he had three of the things so each of us got one – but Tolly keeps mine safe for me.”

Sherlock thought for a moment then leaned forward.

“Mr. Wilson”, he said, “we are entering a critical phase in this investigation. You were right to take care and to not rush over here. However it is my belief that for all that you have found so far, there may be some sort of message hidden somewhere in your room. When you return to Whitsun House you must search the room thoroughly, from top to bottom. If you find something, be sure that no-one is around to witness it and tell no-one, not even your fellow servants. Act as sagely as you have thus far and use your next half-day to go to the telegraph office and communicate any findings with us. Also, make sure that you are not followed next time.”

The butler's eyes widened in fear.

“What do you mean, 'next time'?” he asked.

Sherlock stood and went over to the window again.

“You may have been followed here today”, he said. “That man down in the clothes-shop doorway across the road is Feniton, a professional watcher. He was not there when you arrived – I checked – so presumably he lost touch with you somewhere and is guessing that you may have come here. Fortunately the doctor can escort you out the back way and show you the way home from Siddons Lane. Is there anything else?”

The young man scratched his head.

“Well, I suppose that there was the chocolate éclair.” 

We both stared at him in surprise.

“What about it?” Sherlock asked.

“It happened two days ago, sir”, he said. “Miss Abernetty you see, she does not like anything with chocolate on and we all know that. It is not one of those allergy things; she just has the opposite to a sweet tooth. But we had had a new maid start that week, Phyllis, and she took some out of the pantry and up to her. It was a good thing that Mrs. Barlow was not there at the time; she was always very strict about the poor girl's diet though we all thought that was because it meant more food for her. Yet when the plate came back down, both éclairs were gone.”

“Possibly Mr. Barlow ate them?” I suggested. “Or maybe the maid?”

The butler shook his head.

“He was downstairs at the time, writing”, he said. “I know that Phyllis does not like chocolate either, plus she worries dreadfully about her weight despite being so thin.”

 _Two people who do not like chocolate in the same house_ , I thought. It really was a strange world at times.

“The man of the house downstairs and no-one to guard the precious Miss Abernetty”, Sherlock observed, looking at me for some reason. “Thank you, Mr. Wilson. The doctor will show you out now.”

I did, taking the man out through the back door as requested and directing him around the top of the Park where he could avoid the watcher. I noticed as we left that Sherlock was once more watching the street from the window but did not remark on the fact. Our guest was nervous enough as it was.

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“So what was with the magazines?” I asked on my return.

“A cry for help”, he said. “Cleverly done, too. Let us hope that it has not come too late.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“If you apply the part numbers to the titles you get the words _Hound, Empty, League_ and _Peter_ ”, he said. “The first letters of which make the word 'help'. Someone entered Mr. Wilson's room and deliberately selected those magazines hoping both that he would come here and that he would convey the message.”

“Who did that?” I asked.

“It had to have been young Miss Abernetty”, he said. “Consider the chain of events. Her grandfather dies and his estate falls into the hands of his niece and her husband. They will be in control for a year at most before their charge comes of age. Assuming as is likely that they have the lawyer in their pocket they can use that time to strip it bare – but there is a problem. Their charge will not do as she is told. The law has, thankfully, progressed a little and the signature of someone who is over eighteen but not yet twenty-one is needed on official documents.”

“She is being held prisoner?” I gasped. He nodded.

“It seems so”, he said gravely. “I really would like to search Mr. Wilson's room thoroughly myself as I am sure that I would find her message more easily, but any suspicion of my involvement in the case would endanger young Miss Abernetty's life.”

“But if they killed her, the distant cousin would inherit”, I pointed out. 

“That may not stop them”, he said. “This is difficult. I would like to find out more about this cousin but I fear that Mr. Wilson may despite my warning call on me once he finds that message, and I do not want to leave Baker Street.”

“I can go to Somerset House”, I offered. “It is not far and would not take me long.”

He smiled at me.

“Thank you, John.”

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I hurried up the stairs and fairly burst through the door. Sherlock looked up in surprise at my noisy entrance.

“What is it?” he asked.

“I have found the cousin!” I panted. “A first cousin once removed descended from the late Mr. Abernetty's father James. He is a factory-owner called Mr. Gustavus Abernetty and he moved down South six months ago. You will never guess where to!”

“Chingford.”

I do not think that I have ever deflated so fast.

 _“You knew!”_ I said accusingly.

“I suspected”, he grinned. “Tell me what you found out about this new Abernetty.”

“He is forty-five years of age'”, I said, still annoyed at his... being him. “He is a widower; he had married an heiress called Miss Bulstrode and inherited his factories from her but sold nearly all of them off after she died two years back except for a highly profitable one in London which he still owns. They make buttons.”

“A widower”, he said, frowning. “That is very serious.”

“Why?” I asked, puzzled.

“Because the Church of England would not prevent him from marrying his cousin to keep the estate in the family”, he said grimly. “Their rules on such things are archaic, and I am sure that the Barlows could find a priest to carry out the ceremony even if the girl made it quite clear that it was against her wishes.”

“Such a travesty would be overturned by any court!” I protested.

“Who would challenge it?” he said. “There would be no-one to defend the girl's interests and I feel fairly certain that the poor thing would 'have an accident' not long after the wedding in which case all her worldly goods would become her husband's. Except for a generous cut that he would then pass onto the Barlows.”

“We would challenge it!” I said hotly.

“But they do not know of our involvement yet and for the poor girl's safety we must keep it that way”, he reminded me. “If anything happened to her after even a sham marriage then they would be in possession, and you know how important that is in deciding matters in the courts. I wonder what our Mr. Wilson will find when he gets back to Alexandra Palace tonight?”

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Another week passed and still Sherlock seemed surprisingly disinterested in the case. The only event of interest was that Sergeant Baldur called round, and told us that he was applying for promotion to inspector in the inevitable rearrangement that would happen when both Gregson and LeStrade retired soon (along with a major drop in cake sales in the capital, I thought but did not say yet somehow still got a sharp look from 'someone'). 

The sergeant also brought some news of Sherlock's orphanage which was having a major refurbishment at his expense. I nearly missed him as I had gone to the library to to do my research; unlike LeStrade our new police friend was wont to call on non-baking days! And no, I was _not_ being a cynic because guess which two policeman (notably quite comfortable in each other's personal space, I had noted but had not remarked upon) had 'just happened to be passing' on Mrs. Malone's currant-cake day last week!

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Saturday was Mr. Wilson's day off and I wondered if he would call round, despite the warning not to. The morning passed butler-less but just after lunch he was announced.

“You were right on both counts, Mr. Holmes!” he said breathlessly. “I did find something, a hand-written note folded behind the chest of drawers.”

He handed it to Sherlock who read it quickly before passing it to me:

_'They want me to marry my cousin, Gustavus. I refused but they said that they would do it anyway. I am afraid that they will drug me and bribe a priest to do the dreadful deed. Help me!_   
_Wilhelmina Abernetty (Miss)'_

“You were right”, I told Sherlock. “What now?”

“Where is Miss Abernetty?” Sherlock asked urgently.

“She and Mr. Barlow had gone out for a drive when I left”, the butler said nervously. “You do not think....”

“This has gone on long enough”, Sherlock said grimly. “We will rescue the poor girl this day! Mr. Wilson, we will need your help.”

“Of course”, the butler said stoutly before his face fell. “Er, how?”

“Because only you can recognize Miss Abernetty”, Sherlock said as if it were obvious. “Come, doctor. We shall take a cab and fetch the girl from the clutches of those so-called 'guardians' of hers!”

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Sherlock explained the message hidden in the magazines to our friend, whose handsome visage darkened at the villainy involved.

“I was indeed followed”, he said. “But I took a trick out of one of your books, doctor, your Westmorland adventure with the murderous uncle. I went to Palace Gates Station and boarded a train at the back then got out the other side and hid behind it. My pursuer did not get off and I went to the Palace station on the Great Northern line, then changed at Highgate to keep one step ahead of them.”

“You did well, for there was no-one outside when we left Baker Street”, Sherlock praised. “I must say that this was all very cleverly planned. The Barlows knew that young Miss Abernetty would not fall in with their scheme to strip the estate bare so they decided to force her into marriage with her cousin who, I am sorry to say, was all too willing to go along with this shameful scheme. I am sure that in the time that the legal processes against them would have taken to get moving, they would have grabbed their 'pay-off', sold the whole estate and have fled abroad.”

“Despicable!” I ground out. Mr. Wilson nodded in agreement.

“They planned to remove her from the house and substitute Mrs. Barlow for a short time”, Sherlock went on. “The idea was that a day before the fair Mr. and Mrs. Barlow would stage a huge argument after which she would storm out and go to the house in Chingford. Then when all the servants were away at the fair the following day a drugged Miss Abernetty would be smuggled from the house and taken to Chingford, and Mrs. Barlow would take her place. That was why the chocolate éclairs were eaten; it was not Miss Abernetty in the room at the time and Mrs. Barlow must have either forgotten about her ward's dislike of chocolate or have just been hungry. Their watch on the girl was so close that the servants would not think it unusual not to see her for a while.”

“However, young Miss Abernetty chanced to overhear their scheming and made plans of her own. She knew that some of the servants were in the pay of her grasping relatives so she alighted on the newcomer as the one least likely to have been 'bought'. She was the one who went into your room and artfully rearranged your books, Mr. Wilson, and moved certain magazines then left that message in your drawer. She also chose you because of your interest in my work hoping – correctly – that her 'breaking and entering' would intrigue you enough to come to me.”

“She then returned to her room and ordered a plate of bread and butter. She deliberately placed the plate over a table-lamp so that it partly melted. She foresaw, again correctly, that you would be intrigued by something so odd.”

The butler reddened and looked out of the window.

“We have just passed King's Cross”, he said in surprise.

“Of course”, Sherlock said. “As I said, Miss Abernetty is likely being held prisoner at the cousin's house in Chingford. We are headed to Liverpool Street from where we will effect the rescue.”

The butler nodded.

“We _will_ save her!” he said firmly.

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The suburban train journey from Liverpool Street seemed to take forever but at last we were steaming into the Essex town's little terminus. I was more than a little surprised to find Sergeant Baldur and two of his own constables waiting for us outside the station. The Metropolitan Police's local stations tended as I have said before to be fiercely territorial, and for one to affect an arrest on another's patch was considered unwarranted unless there was a very good reason. I would have asked Sherlock about it but he was clearly focussed on the task ahead.

The four of us took two cabs to a quiet street called Essendon Avenue and stopped some distance away from a rather ugly large brick house that, Sherlock said, was where the cousin Mr. Gustavus Abernetty lived. There was a cab waiting outside it and as the four of us approached two men and a woman came out of the house, the men dragging a barely-conscious girl between them.

“That is her!” Mr. Wilson shouted. “Miss Abernetty! Stop!”

The three people looked up at his shout and the woman immediately ran back into the house and slammed the door. One of the men dropped his hold of the girl and advanced but a furious Mr. Wilson stepped forward and punched him so hard he fell to the floor motionless, moaning softly. Sergeant Baldur quickly had his cuffs out and on the other man who held up his hand in defence. One of the policeman went into the house after the woman while a second one hurried around the back presumably to preclude any escape that way.

“Mr. William Thompson, Mr. Gustavus Abernetty”, the sergeant said grimly. “I arrest you both in the name of the law. I will remind you that anything you say can and will be used in evidence against you.”

Mr. Gustavus Abernetty, presumably the handcuffed man from his better quality clothes, growled while Mr. Thompson moaned again. Sherlock, apparently the only one of us with any sense, had rushed forward to help up the fallen girl, who uttered a pitiful cry. Mr. Wilson hurried to assist him.

“I really think that it would be best if you take young Miss Abernetty home right now”, Sherlock said to the butler. “She has been through a most shocking ordeal. I am sure that the sergeant can collect any testimony from her a little later, once she is fully recovered.”

“That would be... nice”, the young lady said faintly, before looking vaguely at Mr. Wilson. “Do I know you?”

“Wilson, your butler, madam”, the man said holding her as Sherlock stood back. “Do not worry. You are safe now.”

“Oh yes”, she giggled (I guessed that she had indeed been drugged). “Sandy. _My dashing hero!”_

She giggled again and all but draped herself over the poor butler, who flushed bright red. Fortunately he was easily able to bear her weight and with my help they made it to the cab and were driven off. 

What happened next left me speechless!

Once the cab was out of sight the downed Mr. Thompson scrambled to his feet, apparently effecting a Lazarine recovery and the other woman – the maid Judith, I remembered – came out of the house and walked up to Sherlock. Sergeant Baldur swiftly removed the cuffs from Mr. Gustavus Abernetty. Sherlock smiled at them all.

“Thank you for all your help these past few weeks”, he said, handing each of the three some coins. “It has been a pleasure doing business with you.”

“Doctor”, the sergeant whispered from behind me, “your mouth is open!”

I walked round and stood in front of Sherlock who looked at me innocently as the three people ambled back into the house. The sergeant was chatting amiably with his constables.

“Care to share?” I ground out. “What the hell is going on here?”

“Why, doctor”, he smiled, “I am doing what I always do, namely protecting the interests of my client. Miss Wilhelmina Abernetty.”

I was dimly aware that I was doing that goldfish impression again, but words failed me.

“Your..... client?” I managed at last. He nodded.

“She decided when she first saw him that she was going to marry Mr. Wilson”, he said. “Indeed, further analysis showed that he was everything that she wanted in her husband. The only problem was that her quarry held fast to the belief that the classes do not and cannot mix so she came to me and these last few months we, with the assistance of her most obliging family, have effected a plan to turn him from an ordinary English butler into a dashing hero who rescued her from the clutches of her evil money-grubbing relatives.”

“Who were all in on it!” I said, grinding my teeth.

“Up to and including the men following Mr. Wilson, yes.”

“Why did you not tell me?” I all but shouted.

“Because you are too honest, doctor”, he said with a smile. “You wear your heart on your sleeve. You are infinitely believable when acting out a romantic scene like this one which we had to make Mr. Wilson believe in.”

“But what when he finds out?” I asked.

“He will not”, Sherlock said. “Hence our old friend here rather than the local police who might have actually tried to make a real arrest. Another satisfied client I think. I shall so look forward to your writing up this case.”

“Harrumph!” I grunted.

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I did not sulk all the way back to Baker Street. I did not! I was just a little annoyed.

All right I was sulking, and it was only made worse by the fact that I knew that Sherlock was right damn him! I was hopeless at lying for any length of time and my account of Sherlock's 'death' some nine years back had been rendered infinitely more believable because I had believed him dead when I had written it. But it still rankled that he had not trusted me.

He said nothing about my childishness which was generous of him but when I went to bed that night I pointedly closed the door behind me. Yes, I was being both petty and petulant but then Mr. Darwin had said we were evolved from ape-like creatures that had fallen out of trees relatively recently on a geological time-frame, so I had the right.

I jumped when I felt Sherlock slipping into bed behind me but remained facing away from him. 

“You are upset with me”, he whispered. I do not know why he always kept his voice low at times like these; our rooms were mercifully well removed from those of the house's other tenants which was often just as well. He ran a hand down my back and I shuddered.

“I just wish you had told me”, I said trying to keep the bitterness out of my voice, and failing miserably. “You are my true love, Sherlock.”

He slid a little closer and I was about to turn to face him when I realized something. Reaching down I felt around his waist and what I found made all the blood in my body make a simultaneous bee-line for my lower brain so fast, my head actually ached.

“Sherlock?”

“Yes, John?”

“Are you wearing.... my panties?”

“No, John.”

“But....”

“These are my own, John. Bought especially for you.”

I whimpered, then turned with surprising speed for a middle-aged man still in his forties and pushed him over onto his back. He went willingly, a slow smile creasing his features.

“You do know that it will take more than that to win me over?” I said, trying to keep my cool. He quirked an eyebrow at me.

 _“Really?”_ he smirked.

I snarled, and pushed his legs into the air, shoving the panties out of the way and pushing myself inside him – the bastard had prepared himself which was damnably presumptuous of him. He grunted pleasurably, and I set about demonstrating to him just how annoyed I really was.

It was a very thorough demonstration, one that I felt compelled to repeat. Twice.

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Two weeks later he actually presented me with a wooden plaque on which what remained of those panties were mounted. Beneath them in brass was 'Mount Sherlock, Conquered by John Watson. July 1900'

When I retired and had a room that no-one except Sherlock had access to, they were the first thing going up on the wall!

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	14. Case 298: The Adventure Of The Curious Cab-Driver

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 1900\. An unusual London cabbie puzzles over a mathematical improbability, while poor John has to deal with a combination of one annoying Cornish ex-fisherman, one highly creative carpenter and one very horny consulting detective. Oh his life!

_[Narration by Mr. Sherlock Holmes, Esquire]_

This odd little adventure began one Sunday in late July when Olivia, a new maid at the house, came up unannounced shortly after breakfast. Fortunately I had had my coffee and bacon (and very generously only half of John's bacon), while he was lying in our bed groaning at the unfairness of blue-eyed sex maniacs who woke him with unannounced hand-jobs of a morning. I had had to go and hold his plate for him while he had eaten but the look of undying love I had gotten in return had nearly made me give him his bacon back.

Well, nearly. I had thought about giving some of it back. I had!

Olivia was a decent enough girl but she always seemed nervous in my presence for some reason, so I waited patiently for her to get the words out. I did not have any appointments until the afternoon, which given the speed that she was not managing was perhaps just as well.

“Begging your pardon sir but..... but..... there's a cab-driver here.”

I frowned.

“We did not order a cab”, I said (I had not and John certainly could not have done, at least not in his current condition). 

She looked at me nervously and I waited patiently, watching the motes of dust caught in the light from the window. I was sure that at least a minute passed.

“To see the both of you, sir”, she said. “About..... a Matter.”

She came to a grinding halt and looked hopefully at the door. I sighed.

“Please inform Mrs. Malone that she may send them up in fifteen minutes”, I said, looking at the clock. “In fact, you had better make that nine o' clock. _Not_ before.”

“No sir!” she squeaked before almost falling over her feet in her haste to leave. I sighed again and went to see if John needed help to rejoin the land of the living. Most probably.

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By the turn of the hour I had helped John to his table although he was still in poor shape. He glared at me when I pointedly placed a cushion on his chair.

“I could always remove it, you know”, I teased.

“It is at times like this that I wonder about that life-insurance policy”, he grumbled as he lowered himself carefully onto the chair. He sighed happily once he was down then looked suspiciously at me.

“And tone down that damn smirk!” he grumbled.

I sniggered but crossed to my chair, just in time for Olivia to usher in our visitor. Very much the atypical London cabbie was my first impression; short, undernourished, scruffy....

Maybe not that typical. Add 'female' to the list.

I heard a brief yelp as John instinctively tried to rise to his feet before realizing no, that was not going to happen any time soon. I suppressed a smile (it was still not a smirk, whatever anyone said) and turned to our guest.

“Greetings, madam”, I said courteously. “You are here to seek our help?”

The woman – and with her hair unfolding from beneath her cap she was definitely a woman – eyed us warily before nodding.

“Name's Elaine Nardo”, she said shortly. “Latka, the repair fellow at the depot, he says you solved something for a cousin of his some years back. Can't remember the name but he said you likely knew his friend, a fellow called John Halberd.”

I knew from the pained silence a few yards behind me that John had just done much the same calculations as I had. The Adventure Of The Fearful Fugitives as he had called it, one of our very first cases not long after we had moved into Montague Street, our first home together. Twenty-three years ago; both men had done well in the United States and were happily married with families of their own with Mr. Radev recently acquiring his first grandson.

At least I knew full well how best to distract John when he got maudlin about the passing years. Besides, I quite enjoyed distracting him!

“Thing is Louie, the manager at the depot, he's a creep”, our visitor said. “He tried it on with me the first day I was there but I was ready for him and he left a lot quicker than he'd come. That was six months ago and he still doesn't want me there.”

“You believe that he may be taking measures to force you out?” I asked. She nodded.

“He's very much one of those 'a woman's place is in the home' fellows”, she said disdainfully. “Funny thing is his girlfriend Zena who comes to the depot from time to time, she's got him totally under her thumb. She's all right but yes, he wants me out and I'm sure he's up to something.”

“To what is he 'up'?” I asked.

She hesitated.

“You spend a lot of time thinking as a cabbie”, she said. “Maths has always been a thing of mine and I know it's not likely for a cabbie to get the same customer more than once or twice; people want a vehicle rather than a specific driver. Yet in the past few months I've had the same fellow four times. I know him from the newspapers; he's that pompous politico who is always going on about morals. Festerigg his name is.”

Mr. Arthur Festerigg was indeed a moralizing politician, the member for one of the London constituencies if I remembered correctly. He was always sounding off about 'the good old days' and was remarkably effective, at least when it came to the rapid emptying of any room that he was speaking in.

“Did you take this man to the same place each time?” I asked. She nodded.

“A couple of odd things about that though”, she said. “He got taken to Maryland Road and asked to be dropped off outside a molly-house there. First time I thought nothing of it but the second time I got a fare almost immediately and had to go right round the park. I saw him across it, walking towards up the steps of another house some distance down. Couldn't mistake him; I'm sure he polishes that dome of his let alone he's as wide as he is tall.”

“What was the other odd thing?” I asked.

“I looked up where he lived”, she said, “and I found that he always asked to be picked up around the corner and out of sight of the house. Suspicious, I thought.”

I nodded and looked expectantly at her.

“Anything you can do?” she asked hopefully.

“Not until you tell me the fact that you are currently withholding”, I said firmly.

She looked hard at me, then chuckled.

“How did you know?” she asked.

“Despite his doubtless thinking that he should be in the newspapers as often as possible, Mr. Festerigg is not seen around London that much”, I said. “I doubt that even an interest in mathematical probabilities would have led you to seek my help in this matter. What else has happened?”

“You're good”, she said. “All right. There were four trips to the molly-house, and the morning after the last one I was asked to pick him up from there and take him home, or at least to round the corner from his home. Plus he was not alone; he had some fellow with him and they were being intimate in my damn cab!”

“Did you see where this 'friend' went?” I asked.

“I dropped him off in Vermont Lane, near another molly-house there”, she said. “Didn't see him go in though as I picked up another client straight off, and he was in a tearing hurry.”

I thought for a moment.

“I do have some lines of inquiry that I can make into this matter”, I said. “If you leave your address in the notebook on the table next to you, I promise you that I will contact you if and when I have news.”

She looked surprised at her success but did so, thanked us again and left. I looked across at John and grinned.

“Oh come on!” he said, clearly horrified. “Have mercy on a broken man!”

“Not up for a cab ride?” I asked innocently. “All for the case _of course!”_

He just pouted at me.

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It was not John's lucky day despite my most generously sparing his abused backside that cab journey. I sent round to our friend Sweyn to ask about the seemingly dishonourable member and he sent his deputy round – Lowen, John's least favourite Cornish ex-fisherman ever. My beloved staggered over to my chair to glare at the fellow even if the effort clearly cost him. Which reminded me; I needed to thank our visitor for suggesting that spicy unguent which was why John was in such poor shape today. Apparently it really did make the recipient 'Feel The Heat'!

Perhaps I had better not thank our guest not just now or John might well try to kill him. Or worse, pout so adorably that I would just have to take him back to his room and fuck him again.

Lowen sat down (elegantly as usual) and began.

“My first reaction to your request was to wonder if it was April the First”, he smiled, somehow managing to leer at me at the same time. “Of all the so-called great and the good, the likes of the pontificating Mr. Festerigg using _our_ services seemed about as remote as Darkest Peru! But we checked and he definitely did not come into that house at any time.”

“What about an assumed name?” John asked suspiciously.

Lowen smiled brightly at him, then leered at me again before answering. I heard a definite growl from a hazel-eyed someone in the vicinity, although he would later claim that it was just a cough that had come out wrong. Hmm.

“Someone as recognizable as Frederick Festerigg passing himself off as someone else?” he said. “No, doctor. In a business like ours it pays to know one's enemies as well as one's friends, and we would have known if he had tried that. To answer your other question, I asked at Vermont and they did not have anyone come in around the time you said.”

“As I suspected”, I said. “Thank you for coming, Lowen. You always spice up any day.”

He barely suppressed a laugh at that but fortunately John did not get it. That was all right though – he would be getting it later! So would my teasing friend when he rejoined his beloved Salerio and Solario, and received a double helping of Italian sausage!

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Talking of well-endowed men like the Italian stallions I was fortunate in knowing someone in just the right place to assist me in this matter, Mr. Henry Percy who had assisted me in the matter of Salerio's divorce last year and whose brother Harry I had helped get to the United States with Miss Rosewood after the Boscombe Valley case in 1888. He was as I have said as handsome and dashing as his elder brother, so it was a good thing that John was not the jealous sort.

“Utterly horrible fellow!” Mr. Percy said firmly, smiling his thanks as I handed him his drink (John was coughing again; I would have to fetch him those pastilles from the medicine-cabinet). “Considering where _I_ work that is saying something. I can only thank my lucky stars that he does not swing my way.”

“One of his employees thinks that he wishes to be rid of her”, I said.

“That would be Miss Nardo”, he said at once. “She does around the house where I work most of the time; more than one client has expressed his utter horror at having been driven anywhere by a _female!_ Oh the inhumanity!”

I chuckled at his obviously _faux_ shock.

“Do you know anything else about this Mr. De Palma?” I asked.

“Only that he is reputed to put it about a bit”, he said. “He has money, which quite a few in the capital will consider reason enough to overlook a fellow's physical and character failings. But then some people will do anything – _or anyone_ – for money.”

He gave me a leering look. John coughed. Again.

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I paid Mr. Percy for his time and saw him off, then returned and got something out of a draw before dropping it on the desk by John.

“Pastilles?” he asked, confused.

“For that cough of yours”, I said innocently.

He glared at me. I was in for a rough night. Good.

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The following day what was left of me arranged to hire Miss Nardo's cab for a period of time and asked that she meet John and I in Grendon Park. John was still pouting that despite his fucking me three times the night before and once this morning, I looked totally unruffled, partly because I knew full well that it would provoke him to try again later.

Our client duly arrived and looked at us curiously.

“This is Louie's road”, she said, “and he's not in today.”

“I know”, I said. “I thought that you might find it enjoyable to see what is about to happen. Can you please drive us to the south side of the park to where we can see Mr. De Palma's front door?”

We got in and made the journey of under a minute before stopping again. We did not have to wait long; barely five minutes later the black door opened and a short balding fellow came out, locking it behind him. If anything Mr. Percy had been too generous over his description of him.

“That's him!” Miss Nardo said through the window at the back of the cab.

Mr. De Palma barely had not started down his front steps when I saw two women approaching him from opposite directions. One was smartly if plainly dressed while the other was very visibly a 'lady of negotiable affections', as her green dress was not so much off the shoulder as almost on the pavement.

“The one in grey is his girlfriend, Zena”, Miss Nardo told us. “No idea who the other one is, though I wouldn't want her in _my_ cab.”

The questionable lady reached Mr. De Palma first – and promptly planted a kiss on him! He struggled in surprise but she was stronger than he was and held him for some moments before releasing him and sailing away with a “Later, Lou!”. 'Zena' gaped in shock, then marched up to Mr. De Palma who was still reeling and....

Impressive. Who would have thought she could have got her knee up so high in _that_ dress?

Mr. De Palma writhed on the ground screaming in agony as his likely now former girlfriend departed, and I quickly tapped on the cab roof. Miss Nardo had us next to the stricken fellow in short order.

“Greetings, Mr. De Palma”, I said smoothly. “Actors are such wonderful things, are they not?”

He struggled to his feet still clutching his vitals and stared confusedly at us.

“Who're you?” he demanded. “What d'you mean?”

“My name is Mr. Sherlock Holmes”, I said. “Miss Nardo employed me to uncover the fact that you had employed two actors, one of whom bore a reasonable facsimile to a well-known pontificating politician. You planned that eventually your employee would make an accusation against the real Mr. Festerigg and she would then have to be sacked as a result.”

He stared at us all in shock.

“I have to tell you”, I said, “that I tracked down the actors you used who mercifully for them were unaware of the reasons for your subterfuge. When they were told they agreed to sign a written statement of your guilt, and if Miss Nardo here has any future problems with your behaviour she will immediately forward it to your employers. I decided that two could play at employing actors and actresses, as your girlfriend just witnessed.”

“You bastard!” he ground out. 

“Most definitely”, I said. “And if you continue to persecute Miss Nardo, you will find out just how much. Good day, sir. Driver, onwards!”

Our client took us away at a smart pace, ignoring the rather expressive language from her depot manager.

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Miss Nardo dropped us off at the Maryland Road molly-house as John had been asked to treat a couple of the boys. At least his nemesis Lowen was not available (he was in fact having a half-day off with his Italian lovers, of which relationship John did not yet know) although we did meet Mr. Percy and told him about the resolution of the case. I really wish that technology had advanced enough for a camera to catch John's face when our friend said that he was done for the day and we could use his 'cab-bed' to celebrate. Although when Mr. Percy offered to demonstrate his 'open window routine'.... the way John looked at him, my next case might well be one of murder!

I would never look at those cab-windows in the same way again! Nor, I suspected, would John!

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	15. Interlude: Sonnet 38

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 1900\. A love sonnet – with a difference

_[Narration by Mr. Laurence 'Lowen' Trevelyan, Esquire]_

When would I learn? When would I bloody well learn?

Sol pressed down hard on me, and I moaned deliriously as I felt the Italian Stallions' cocks fighting for dominance inside of me. Seriously they could open an extension to the underground up there, I was so damn wide!

“Told you”, Sal said, pulling me down for a kiss. “I knew we could get some Shakespeare into you if we tried.”

“Certainly shaking our mighty spears!” Sol chuckled, holding me even tighter as if he was afraid that I might somehow slip away from their dual grip. _As if!_

“So you read a sonnet to me”, I said, quite proud that I could still manage words while being double-fucked. “Like I can remember any of it!”

It was that awful moment when you realize that you have just said something incredibly dumb, but cannot quite figure out what.

“Really?” Sal rumbled. “Then we had better go back and start again. _'How_ can my _Muse_ want _subject_ to _invent?†'_

 _”While_ thou dost _breathe_ , that _pour'st_ into my _verse”,_ Sol continued. 

And they both thrust at every loud word. I moaned in pleasure as I was once again taken apart, the wonderful pain as my broken cock tried to come on empty. I was so damn lucky – and I was getting educated as well!

Thought I might just 'forget' it all again later.......

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_Notes:_   
_† From Sonnet 38, appropriately one of the 'Fair Youth' series of sonnets. Lowen was just turned forty at the time, and was not likely to make forty-one if this kept up!_

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	16. Case 299: The Adventure Of The Park-Attendant ☼

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 1900\. All that Bert Andrews asks out of life is to let him get on with making his bit of Regent's Park run like clockwork, and to leave him in peace. Unfortunately a new local preacher seems bent on making Bert's life as difficult as possible. At least until Sherlock takes an interest.....

_[Narration by Doctor John Watson, M.D.]_

We hardly ever saw Mr. Cornelius Starmin, the general manager of the great green lung that was Regent's Park, although given that fellow's generally unpleasant nature that was no bad thing. We more often encountered one of his underlings, the infinitely more genial Mr. Albert Andrews, who patrolled the area closest to Baker Street where we often walked. On this particular day Mr. Andrews had seemed unusually down and Sherlock had asked him why, only for Mr. Starmin to come hurrying over and insist that the fellow get on with his job. Sherlock had just looked the manager up and down, and the fellow had disappeared faster than a rasher of bacon when 'someone' was around.

I wondered what Sherlock had on the unpleasant manager. And I really wished that he would not tut at me like that!

“You can always tell Mr. Starmin that I wished for your advice on a case involving the parks”, Sherlock said to the clearly fretting Mr. Andrews. “You are a most level-headed gentleman, Albert, so I am sure that it would take something quite important to unsettle you.”

The park-attendant nodded but stayed silent until he was installed in our rooms, where he downed a fair-sized whisky in one go and looked more than capable of managing another.

“It's the wife, sir”, he said, to the evident surprise of us both.

“Evie?” I asked, surprised. “There is a problem with her pregnancy?”

_(Although I would never have remarked on it, I had always thought Albert and Evelyn Andrews among the oddest of odd couples. She was about thirty, stunningly beautiful and could have had any man in London (except mine of course!) while he was nearly ten years older, short, scruffy and had the proverbial face like the back of an omnibus. Yet they had four children already and she clearly doted on her husband whose nature was I admit kindly but... I would never understand women!_

_That nod from 221B's resident bacon-stealer was quite uncalled for!)_

“She said that she doesn't want to go to church no more, sir”, the fellow said miserably. “You see our new vicar, Reverend Slewbury, he's one of those fire-and-brimstone preachers who is always yelling at us poor folks for doing wrong. She says she can't take any more of him which I can get – _'cause neither can I!”_

“Please explain”, Sherlock said calmly. “Take your time Albert, and speak slowly so that the doctor can take notes. It is not just church, is it?”

He nodded miserably.

“You see”, he said, “Evie got mad last week at him. She's normally such a quiet thing and I know – 'cause everyone tells me – that she's far too good for the likes of me, but she has a temper on her when roused. She told him at the end of the service that she was going elsewhere to worship and not coming back. That sparked a bit of a do 'cause a lot of other ladies said they felt the same, and left too.”

“I presume that your Reverend Slewbury did not take this very well?” I guessed. He nodded.

“He preaches in the park now”, he said sadly. “He always does it at one of the places where the paths meet so everyone has to walk round him. It's wrecking the poor grass which is dry enough with no rain this summer, and I gets the blame from Mr. Starmin for all the damage.”

“Something that I am sure this Reverend Slewbury knows all too well”, Sherlock said, frowning. 

“Then he's always going on about how evil the Empire is”, our visitor said. “I know we've got some things wrong – every country does sooner or later – but he's on about it all the time.”

I frowned. I was patriotic at the end of the day, despite not trusting our current or for that matter any government to tell me anything more than the time of day, and I strongly suspected that this preacher was doing what they called 'cherry-picking', only highlighting the bits of history that proved his point and ignoring the rest. As far too many historians and journalists did these days.

“What living does this priest hold?” Sherlock asked, nodding in that annoying way of his.

“St. Justinian's, over towards the Grove”, our visitor said. “We go to St. Cyprian's now.”

“He is clearly targeting you for your wife having had the effrontery to stand up to his bullying”, Sherlock said. “Well, I am a fair man. He will be asked to stop – and if he declines, then he can face the consequences!”

We both looked at him in surprise.

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I was less surprised when, two days later, Sherlock told me that the Reverend Slewbury was still damaging the Park and annoying Mr. Andrews.

“What will you do?” I asked.

“Fuck you until you scream for mercy”, he said matter-of-factly. 

I shook my head at him, appealing as that prospect sounded.

“I meant about Mr. Andrews”, I said. “Focus!”

“I will, while I fuck you until you scream for mercy”, he said. “But as for the Reverend, he is about to find that what goes around comes around. My bed, you, naked, two minutes.”

I sighed,. My life was so hard. _Or at least it was about to be!_

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Our friend Constable 'Ginger' Tudor came round the following day.

“I thought you might like to know”, he grinned, “that a certain cleric whose house is on my patch put in a complaint yesterday.”

Our friend had been moved as part of the same recent rearrangement of police-stations, and like Sergeant Baldur he too had ended up nearer to Baker Street.

 _”Really?”_ Sherlock said in what was clearly mock surprise. “I cannot _think_ what that would be about.”

“He says the fellow who owns the house that backs onto the vicarage has gone and rented it to some opera singer”, the policeman said, “who practices at all odd hours of the day and night. Particularly when His Reverence is trying to entertain guests. And always out of tune.”

“Some people are _so_ inconsiderate”, Sherlock smiled. “It is a good thing that the Reverend is not one of them, or someone might inform the newspapers about his practising double standards.”

I knew from the 'Times', whose social pages I had just happened to glance at that day as I had had a spare moment, that 'someone' already had. Oops.

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The following day was a Sunday which meant that the turbulent priest was in church. Unfortunately for him he was late arriving for his own sermon as first some inconsiderate person had been holding a meeting in his gateway and was disinclined to move, then his cab ran into another meeting which blocked his road and he had to go round a different way. As John would so rightly say, oh dear how sad never mind.

On Monday some horrible person held another meeting in the cleric's gateway and he arrived home to find that apparently all the litter from it had mysteriously blown over into his garden. When he threw a piece over into the street, he was immediately reprimanded by a passing red-haired constable for littering. Luckily I knew that he was perfectly fine with making a mess for other people to clean up, so he would be equally fine with cleaning up his own.

On Tuesday the Reverend Slewbury's wife was more than a little surprised when her house received a badly-wrapped package addressed to her husband from 'Fanny' containing what was most definitely her husband's underwear, and saying how much she looked forward to the next time he 'preached' with her. Also if he would wear the dog-collar again she would do the thing with the whips and the table-tennis bat. For some strange and inexplicable reason Mrs. Slewbury took this rather badly, and moved out to her parents' house.

On Wednesday we had a visitor at Baker Street, one Mr. Mandell Creighton. Better known as the Bishop of London. It was St. Asaph all over again except, mercifully, for those sheep. Even though it had proven a false allegation I sometimes still had the occasional nightmare, especially with all those terrible jokes by the locals.

The elderly gentleman looked disapprovingly at me.

“You might have alerted me to the problem first, Mr. Holmes”, he said severely.

“The Reverend Slewbury's sexton did pass on a report to your office, sir”, I said. “You may wish to investigate as to why it never reached your desk; I rather suspect the fact that your secretary is a friend of the reverend may have been involved. Besides, as you well know I am an agent of justice first and the law second. Your own employee conducted a campaign of victimization against a poor, innocent park-attendant merely because the fellow's wife dared to stand up to his bullying ways. The Reverend Slewbury was asked to desist in the name of Christian charity but declined so to do. Now he is facing the consequences of his un-Christian behaviour.”

The bishop frowned.

“I know of you, sir”, he said, “and I am not so foolish as to try what some have attempted in the past. Name your terms.”

“I require the removal of this man from his post”, I said. “Because I am a godly man I will allow you to offer him the chance of employment elsewhere, in a position where he can do less harm but not where he can make a poor man's life even worse. For that he will one day answer before St. Peter, although I would wager that when he does he will claim to have done nothing wrong in his actions. His sort always do.”

“So be it”, the bishop said shortly. “You have my word.”

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I am pleased to say that in this case a man's word was his bond, and although the bishop died just six months after this story was set he made sure that his predecessor knew not to place the Reverend Slewbury back in any position where he could do harm. His failure to regain his post at that time made the turbulent priest quit the church and I believe that he started up his own religious cult somewhere. Maybe someone introduced him to my brother Torver?

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	17. Case 300: A Spartan Adventure ☼

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 1900\. Any businessman is b ound to make enemies, but when Mr Sweyn Godfreyson has problems with someone spying on three of his foremost clients, he is understandably worried. Luckily he has a handy friend called Sherlock who might just help.

_[Narration by Mr. Sherlock Holmes, Esquire]_

My next case was a rather unusual one to say the least, but before it happened I had one of those fortunate events in my life that made me wonder if my guardian angel – or even my frequently far too smug twin brother – was indeed watching over me. For Sergeant Valiant LeStrade (waiting only for the seemingly inevitable paperwork to clear his merited promotion to inspector) had chanced to come across a small cottage perfectly situated on the shores of Derwent Water. It would be ideal for two shortly to retire chief-inspectors that I knew – _especially as the road running by it and into nearby Keswick went right past a bakery!_

I would have liked to have John with me at this time but unluckily yet again one of his richer patients was expecting (or at least her grand-daughter was) and the baby was due by the middle of the month. So I journeyed alone to Cumberland, ruing the wasted train journey without fucking someone so hard that they could hardly get off the train at the other end. Sigh. At least I was able to spend the night at Balin's and Balan's house in Bowness, where Mr. Baker and Mr. Poncherello were still staying although they were shortly to move into a small place of their own above the garage where the latter worked. I had been able to assist a little with that; the local council had been 'difficult' over granting permission for the place to be used as a flat but on hearing from me that Miss St. Leger was taking an interest in the matter, they had experienced a sudden a miraculous change of heart. The fame of that lady had, unsurprisingly, spread even to this rural locale!

Fortunately the lakeside cottage proved well worth the trip with the setting being even more stunning that I had hoped, so I purchased it from the vendors then told Sergeant LeStrade that he should tell his uncle it was available for a much lower price as the current owners needed a quick sale. That, with the sales of the two old grouches' current houses, would make it nicely affordable to them and leave them a small sum over to help with their retirement. Or more likely, to buy cake!

Damn John and his infectious cynicism! I would make him pay for that when I got home!

I continued to the windswept Cumberland coast and called in on Inspector Chatton Smith at his police-station in Allonby, noting that the young fellow could barely rise from his desk to greet me. Apparently his lover now being fifty years old had not made him any the less of a horny devil; he kept finding reasons to drop by for 'meetings', which was why the inspector had had to invest in yet another new padded chair! Unfortunately I missed Inspector Macdonald himself as he was with their sons, visiting their aunt up in Selkirkshire. I reminded myself that John would be hitting that milestone in under two years from now. I really had to step up my search for somewhere; to settle when we retired. 

Fortunately I was only nine months out from finding (or being found) it.

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Coincidentally there was also a Cumberland connection to the small adventure that I had on my return south. It concerned three of the most colourful gentlemen in London society at the time, brothers called Agis, Leonidas and Lycurgus Hunsdon. Naturally their Spartan names had meant that they became known as the Three Hundreds; all were handsome, athletic gentlemen around thirty years of age, Agis being a year older than his twin brothers. I had actually known them for some little time through our mutual friend Sweyn and he had been the one to recommend them to both Balin and Balan Selkirk and also the Macdonald boys for 'a holiday to remember'. The Three Hundreds' pilgrimage to the Lakes had since become a regular feature of their calendars, as poor Inspector Smith had told me. I mean, naked Pass The Parcel with him as the parcel?

It was Sweyn who asked for my help in this matter. Unusually he called round to Baker Street rather than sending a message, although it turned out that he had a reason. He brought some news that, although not unexpected, was not good.

“Len!” the Viking said heavily. “He did not take the hint, I am afraid.”

I sighed at that news, wishing that for once I had been wrong in assuming a gentleman's true character. That had been the second of two of the gentlemen whom I had helped free from the horrors of the Tankerville Club back in 1879 to have 'gone wrong', and I very much feared headed the same way as the first. Three years back one of them, Mr. Martin Shipland, had made false accusations against my friend Mr. Crowley and, despite that gentlemen initially having been dissuaded by Mr. Rival from taking any action and myself having sent a warning, Mr. Shipland had persisted in his foolishness. Eventually he had been found floating face-down in the Thames; some people just did not get the hint until it was too late.

The second gentleman who seemed set on following Mr. Shipland down the path of abject stupidity and towards a potential watery end was Mr. Henry Leonard, who like several of his colleagues at the time had joined what was then my stepbrother Campbell's molly-house empire. He had married a few years back but still worked, although I knew that Sweyn had not been totally happy with him for some reason. Even the Viking's lover Lloyd, who got on with almost everyone, had not liked the fellow.

“I had to let him go”, Sweyn said. “He knows the rules of the place as well as anyone, but he accepted money from some ghastly journalist to tell them about the Spartans. Luckily the fellow checked it before publishing and your Miss St. Leger found out, so I was able to put a stop to it. I only hope Len will not push his luck; I am afraid that he is very much the sort.”

I was afraid of that too. Some people seemed destined to learn life's lessons the hard way. I thought involuntarily of a small shop in Ross-shire and shuddered at the memory; I had not touched stuffing on a Sunday dinner-plate since!

“It has not harmed your business?” I asked. He shook his head.

“That did not”, he said. “However, when the Spartans came round earlier today I caught someone looking in the window again, just like the week before. I went outside but there was no-one there except the bin-cart, and the fellow on it had not seen anyone. But then he was busy, I suppose, dealing with everyone's rubbish.”

“Another journalist perhaps?” I wondered? He shook his head.

“It was the house in Mayfair”, he said. “You know what that area is like; there was nowhere for the fellow to hide and not enough time to cross to the park over the road.”

“Yes”, I smiled. “Some very strange people live there!”

“I shall tell Miss St. Leger that you said that!” he grinned.

“She will likely take it as a compliment”, I shot back, “since she sees it as her goal to traumatize as many of the people there that she can! She is sure that her new bright blue boiler-suit of hers will give at least one of them the vapours! Has anything else unusual happened of late at that house?”

“Not that I can recall”, he said. “I was only visiting to tell the Spartans about Len – I had promised to keep them informed – and to reassure them. They are not the sort of gentlemen that I really wish to annoy, with their money and connections.”

I knew that he meant that not just because of those three gentlemen's positions in society but because they were all very large men. Not just tall – they were all about my height at six foot so well above average if shorter than Sweyn and myself – but just large, solidly muscular and powerfully built. Some of the boys at the house called them The Three Bears because they were so hirsute but then molly-house humour was, I had long thought, something that would likely never be cured. I thought back to Mr. Anthony 'Tiny' Little, Luke's lover and now sunning himself on some Polynesian island while shafting its handsome if teasing ruler King Tane.

I wondered what John would look like in a grass skirt.....

“I shall have a watcher to keep an eye on the front of the house for you”, I said, pulling myself away from some Very Happy Thoughts. “As you said it is Mayfair, so someone staring in other people's windows would stand out rather more than elsewhere in London.”

“Thank you”, he smiled.

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A few days passed before my efforts were rewarded, although I have to admit that I was more than a little surprised by the result. Miss St. Leger dug out some facts on the miscreant for me and I arranged to visit Sweyn at the Mayfair house when he had the Spartans there for their next 'debate'.

Close up the Three Hundreds were even more intimidating than in the newspapers, and I was all the more regretful that I did not have a certain doctor definitely not trying to hide behind me, who I would definitely not have teased about it later. Unfortunately John was away in Notting Hill dealing with one of his least pleasant customers, who he only kept attending on because he got on well with her much nicer son. I made a mental note to call by Branksome's to pick up some bakery delights on my way home.

Mr. Lycurgus Hunsdon looked warily at me when Sweyn introduced me.

“You say you know who this fellow is, sir?” he asked.

“I do”, I said. “The answer surprised me somewhat, I admit, but I have checked my facts and the gentleman in question is not the least bit dangerous. In fact he himself comes here twice a week.”

They all looked at me in surprise.

“One of my other clients?” Sweyn asked. 

I shook my head just as there was a knock at the door. Showing great timing, the gentlemen that I had arranged to be outside chose entered, bringing in a scruffy and unprepossessing runt of a fellow who they dropped onto the fireside rug. He was blond and just over five foot in height, undernourished and scruffy in his appearance. He looked around at the three huge men towering over him and whimpered piteously.

 _”Ryan?”_ Sweyn exclaimed incredulously. 

“You know this villain?” Mr. Agis Hunsdon demanded.

“Not exactly a villain”, Sweyn said, beginning to smile at the ridiculousness of the situation. “He is our local dustman!”

The three Spartans had moved closer to the quivering man. I was fairly sure that they would not hit him but I was a little worried.

“Perhaps Mr. Zennor would like to explain just why he has taken to looking through the windows of this establishment?” I offered.

The trapped man whined again and spoke quickly.

“I never meant no harm, sirs!”

“Then what _was_ your game?” Mr. Lycurgus Hunsdon demanded.

The small man blushed fiercely.

“I saw you all going in one day”, he said, “and I guessed.... well, you weren't going to play draughts. I've always been a weedy little thing and I.... I....”

He juddered to a halt. I felt sorry for him really; he had lusted after three prime specimens of Mankind while knowing that he could never.....

“Get up!” Mr. Leonidas Hunsdon said sharply.

The small man shuddered but managed to clamber to his feet. Mr. Leonidas Hunsdon stepped forward until he was literally head to head – well, chest to head – with Mr. Zennor.

“You thought that the three of us.... _with you?”_ he asked.

Mr. Zennor shivered but managed a small nod. Mr. Lycurgus Hunsdon looked at Sweyn.

“You always do these things properly, Mr. Godfreyson”, he said, “which is why we come here. We want you to take this fellow onto your books then hire him out to us. For the whole weekend!”

Mr. Zennor almost collapsed back to the floor on that, but Mr. Lycurgus Hunsdon caught him. Sweyn coughed pointedly and looked at his visitors, who all blushed.

“As you said, you come here because we have rules”, he said. “Ryan?”

The dustman quivered.

“Y....y....yes, sir?” he said tremulously.

“You are free to leave here if you wish”, Sweyn said gently. “Provided that you say nothing of what goes on within these walls – and I am sure that you would have already done so from what you said earlier – then there will be no consequences. _Will there be, gentlemen?”_

The three huge Spartans looked downcast at his words but nodded. Mr. Zennor shook but managed to speak.

“They would.... with _me?”_ he asked incredulously.

Sweyn crossed to a desk and extracted a small booklet.

“These are the house rules”, he said. “I will entertain our guests with coffee while you read them, and if you agree to the terms then you will be employed on the same terms as the other 'boys' here. Once you have read it all and signed the appropriate forms, they can take you with them.”

“Read quickly, boy!” Mr. Leonidas Hunsdon urged,

Sweyn just looked at him. The fellow blushed.

“Sorry, sir”, he said shamefacedly. 

“It is only five pages”, Sweyn said, “but be sure to read the Consequences section at the end as more than one fellow employed here has found out about those the very hard way. You however are a good fellow and I think you will do well, although only with.... certain clients.”

He looked pointedly at the Spartans and they reluctantly moved aside to allow Mr. Zennor a path to Sweyn. My friend took the dustman from the room.

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Apparently Sweyn's newest molly-man was a hit with the Hunsdon brothers, and he gave up his role as a dustman to move into their palatial Mayfair home. He did write to me and thank me for my efforts on his behalf but, rather like Inspector Chatton Smith, the writing was so all over the place that I knew exactly what he had been doing (and who had been doing him!) when he had penned his letter. Another clue was when he said that he was the happiest ex-dustman in all London Town, and added 'also the sorest!'.

On a sadder note, Mr. Leonard proved me right when he did not learn his lesson and again approached a journalist to make money that way. The journalist later received a warning visit at their home that made them disinclined to pursue the matter further. Mr. Henry did not reach home for some three days, having had to unexpectedly detour via the hospital, and frankly he was lucky to have avoided the Thames. He left London a month later.

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	18. Case 301: Murder Over The Border

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 1900\. Politics can make or mar – or in this case, murder – as political differences result in a death across the Border. And the dynamic duo catch up with some old friends.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Mentioned as the case of Baron Dowson.

_[Narration by Doctor John Watson, M.D.]_

It had been an unusually mild summer with just the right balance of heat and breeze to make even London tolerable. It was also mercifully quiet; we had reached September of that year before our next major case which, albeit indirectly, arose courtesy of our friends Gregson and LeStrade both of whom had just retired.

LeStrade in particular had long hoped to spend his golden years with his wife Valerie in their favourite area of the country, the Lake District, but alas! she had died after a long illness just as he had found himself embroiled in the Conk-Singleton Affair, from which _imbroglio_ Sherlock had fortunately been able to extract him. It had been amusing when the two policemen had come round to see us afterwards and had both blushed when they found themselves sitting far too close to each other on our couch; I knew as a doctor that they found solace from holding each other manfully (not the other word starting with the third letter of the alphabet, which rhymed with huddling, and that some horrible friend of mine kept almost saying from time to time!). 

Best of all Sherlock had been able to help them secure their dream home in Cumberland. Their new cottage was perfectly situated on Derwent Water and near a bakery in the town of Keswick; my friend had been tipped off about it by LeStrade's recently promoted son Valiant whose wife Jane was now expecting their eleventh – _eleventh!_ – child. On his return to London Sherlock had remarked about how some fellows seemed unable to keep it in their trousers these days and I had just coughed, which had elicited both a glare and an afternoon during which I learned just why mere coughing could lead to Painful Consequences.

So I enjoyed them. Your point?

My friend then had a small affair concerning Mr. Godfreyson's molly-houses, which I shall not document although Sherlock did make notes about it. I was kept busy by a particularly unpleasant and rich patient of mine whose daughter-in-law was expecting the next generation, and for her son's sake I attended and so saw my friend little for a week or so. Thankfully a healthy baby boy arrived and the son managed to avoid murdering his mother (which I suppose was a good thing), so I was able to join Sherlock in this next case which was to prove.... important.

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Some background. Shortly before I was born the ancient certainties that had been the old Tory and Whig parties, dating back to the divisions of the terrible English Civil War, had been shaken by the repeal of the hated Corn Laws which had cleft the Tories in twain. The bulk of the latter had become the Conservative Party while some of their former colleagues had joined the Whigs to form the Liberal Party. It had long been the expectation of political 'experts', namely the ones who repeatedly forecast the wrong winner at general elections, that of all the divisive issues that then afflicted the late nineteenth century United Kingdom that of Home Rule (self-government for Ireland) would be the one to complete the process of the forties and finish off the Conservatives as a political force. These predictions had achieved their usual degree of accuracy; at the time of the events described herein it was the Liberal Party which was both leaderless and rudderless, a turn of the political wheel which was to have a direct effect on this adventure.

It was five years since the last general election which meant that one was to be held in late September and October (at this time a parliament could last for up to seven years but most governments wisely did not try for a full term as any last-minute disasters might leave them with their backs to the wall if something went wrong in their final year). At that time the Conservatives under Lord Salisbury had a small working majority but their position was greatly improved by the near-permanent support of around seventy Liberal Unionists who had broken away from the main Liberal Party over Home Rule, which gave them an effective majority of well over a hundred. The coming election would, significantly with the benefit of that wonderful thing called hindsight, mark the first members of parliament for the Labour Party which would soon replace the divided Liberals – impressive considering that five years back the Liberals had polled around forty times as many votes as their ultimate nemesis.

From politics to geography (I will get to the eventual case in the end, I promise!). It is a little known fact that there is a small area of England beyond Carlisle; the Border on leaving the River Esk runs first up the little River Sark before cutting across north of the Esk and then its tributary, the Liddell Water. In this small area lies the famous Solway Moss, site of one of the great English victories over the Scots (1542) where some three thousand of our Nation's forces defeated eighteen thousand invading Scots when the Northern leaders decided that when one was standing right next to a marsh and being attacked was the perfect time to have an argument over who should get to lead the army. This had proven to be an unwise (as in fatal) error of judgement.

On the River Sark's western bank is the famous Dumfries-shire village of Gretna Green, the destination for runaway brides and grooms. Although by the time of this story Scots law had for some decades been aligned with that south of the Border, the place was still a popular destination for those who had the money, and couples could even receive a blessing after their marriage in the local church from the village blacksmith, who had once been able to perform the marriage ceremony himself 'over the anvil'. It was I suppose romantic for those who liked that sort of mush.

Sherlock had sorted Mr. Godfreyson's problem in the week during which he had returned to London – the cottage that he had purchased had to be signed off by two gentlemen one of whom was not returning from the Continent until the end of that time – but then he had returned to Cumberland to complete matters. When he said that a case had come up and asked if I was free, I immediately answered in the affirmative and headed up to meet him at Carlisle Citadel Station. It hardly seemed a full fourteen years since we had met The Great Cake-Detector (Mark One) there before the Adventure of the Slipshod Woman – and we immediately journeyed on to Gretna. It was to the town police-station that we directed ourselves where we were to be met by Chief-Inspector Andrew McClaren.

“It is all about the politics, sirs”, the policeman said in his pleasant Borderer accent. “Old Baron Dowson, he owns the land right up against the Border and this is a very delicate matter.”

“Delicate in what way?” Sherlock asked. He was not at his best just then, the coffee he had had at Carlisle having displeased him. Unfortunately the local train here had been a corridor one so he had been unable to vent his displeasure on my body, although I was sure he would remedy that later. At least I hoped so!

_I also hoped that he might stop with the knowing looks, but I supposed that miracles were too much to expect!_

“His son Mr. Alan Armstrong has disappeared, sir”, the chief-inspector said. “Very strange it is.”

A constable chose that moment to knock and enter and Sherlock's eyes lit up when he saw the coffee that the man had brought. I was hard put not to laugh both at that and the chief-inspector's startled expression when Sherlock promptly downed a cup of steaming hot liquid in one go. I knew that if I had, I would regret it sooner rather than later.

An opportunity missed, really.

“Yes”, our host said recovering himself while I poured Sherlock a second coffee and he stared at the coffee-pot as if he was seriously considering taking it down to the smithy and having their union blessed. “You see sirs, Dumfries-shire is a small county and returns just the one member to parliament. The Liberals held it for many years but the Unionists took it in 'Eighty-Six. When it was last contested five years ago the Liberals got it back, but only by thirteen votes in over eight thousand.”

“Ah”, Sherlock said. “Which side of that bitter contention does your Baron Dowson support, pray?”

“He is as Liberal as they come, sir”, the chief-inspector said. “A friend of Mr. David Lloyd George as well, not that I have any particular regard for that inconstant gentleman. Unfortunately Mr. Alan was equally pro-Unionist. Their arguments were the talk of the village.”

Sherlock looked sharply at our host.

“Talking of the village, why did you wish to meet us here?” he asked. “We could easily have continued along the line to your office at Dumfries.”

The chief-inspector reddened.

“That is where I was hoping you gentlemen might come in, sirs”, he said. “You see my superintendent, he is very vocal for Mr. Alan's Unionists despite us coppers not being supposed to be political. The Baron does not trust him to oversee an investigation into his son's disappearance.”

“Surely he has no choice?” I asked. “A Scotsman's home is I know his castle as much as an Englishman's, but the law is the law.”

“The baron is – I hope – one of the last of the old barons, sirs”, the chief-inspector said. “He has a shotgun and his policy is to shoot anyone coming onto his estate whom he suspects of not acting in his interests.”

“Or of not disagreeing with his politics I suspect”, Sherlock said frowning. “This is most difficult. You are asking me to investigate a possible crime but with no access to what is most likely the scene of that crime.”

“Mr. LeStrade speaks very highly of you, sir”, our host said. “He had to bring some documents to our area some weeks back and he heard of the case then. He says that if anyone can make something out of so little, you surely can.”

“I fear that our Valiant friend may be stretching even my humble talents to the limit here”, Sherlock said. “But yes, I shall do what I can in this matter.”

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“We have one break in this case”, he said later as we sat in our rooms at the local hotel.

“What is that?” I asked.

“Because of the election, Baron Dowson will be going round to canvass support”, he said. “That means we may have a chance to look at his home – the immodestly-named Dowson Hall – while he is absent. Although we shall have to make sure that we leave an escape route in case he returns along with his shotgun.”

I shivered at the picture. He saw my reaction and was at my side at once.

“If I even suspected any danger from the man, I would use my own gun on him at once”, he said firmly. “I will not make the same foolish mistake I did at Tonbridge, as I know if belatedly how much my idiocy there hurt you. Besides, I am sure that you as the better shot would get him first.”

“I do not want to mark this trip across the Border with either of us being accused of killing someone”, I said, still nervous.

“We shall make some inquiries in the village first”, Sherlock said. “I have a telegram that I need to send but I shall not be long. I am sure that by the time I get back you will be prepared, naked and ready for me.”

I pouted. Now he was just using sex to distract me!

Good tactic.

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My friend spent a lot of time the next day reading through the files that the chief-inspector had given him on Old Baron Dowson, while what was left of me spent a lot of time being grateful for Sherlock's foresight in packing our aftercare unguent and that particularly soft cushion from Baker Street. Being woken by having your legs thrust right back, and then taken by someone who had not had their coffee yet – it was way more effective than an alarm clock even if the after-effects were more long-lasting. My stamina was not what it was now that I was barely a year out from being forty-ten, as the sassy Mrs. Rockland called it.

“The Baron has two other sons”, Sherlock said smiling for some reason that had better not be the least bit mathematical. “Mr. Alexander works as his estate manager which I find a little unusual for a second son, and Mr. Andrew is away in Edinburgh training up as an accountant, presumably to also assist in the running of things here. I saw Mr. Alexander in the bar last night and he seemed a chancy fellow, although as we know appearances can be deceptive.”

I frowned at that.

“I do not remember you going to the bar”, I said.

“That was after Round Two”, he said airily. “You were so exhausted that you fell asleep straight away, so I slipped away to do some more work.”

That he had (again) not been as exhausted as I was after our couplings last night was, if I am being honest, damnably annoying. He had done most of the work; I had just had to lie there and take it.

“Are you ready for the next round?” he asked innocently.

I stared at him in horror.

“Of toast”, he clarified, indicating the toast-rack.

I glared at him. The odds on a second unaccountable disappearance in this county had just shortened considerably!

He sniggered, which only made things worse!

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Three days later the case took an unexpected turn when Constable Harwood, the Gretna policeman, came to us with news. 

“It looks like the case is over, sir”, he said showing us a copy of a telegram. “This was received at the post-office this morning for Baron Dowson.”

Sherlock took the paper and showed it to me. I read it:

_'Father,_   
_Have purchased the lot near Bangor, Tarker's Farm. Condition of same good; needs new plows and better horses. Sorry for no farewells but the chance to buy came up when you were in Edinburgh. Will write soon._   
_Alan.'_

“Sent from a place called Belfast in the state of Maine”, I observed. “There is a town called Bangor there, I recall, although I do not know how close they are. In that state it could be many hundreds of miles.”

Sherlock read the message again then smiled knowingly.

“Constable”, he said, “we need to know when the Baron is going out campaigning in order to gain access to his property, so that we can find something that he has hidden there.”

“What is that, sir?” the constable asked.

“His eldest son's dead body.”

We both stared at him. He, being Sherlock, stared back.

“But Mr. Alan is alive, sir”, the constable said, his face clearly suggesting that he thought the English detective had gone more than slightly insane but was too polite to say it out loud. 

“When is the baron not at home?” Sherlock pressed.

“He is in Dumfries to campaign today, but....”

“Excellent!” Sherlock said. “Will he be back tonight?”

“No, sir. He always stays with his friend Lord Richards when he goes there.”

“Then we shall take the opportunity afforded by his absence and with any luck have this case wrapped up by his return.”

“But sir, we would need a warrant....”

 _“You_ would, constable”, Sherlock said. “But not us. Does the Baron keep any guard dogs, do you happen to know?”

Despite his surprise, the constable snorted.

“He hates all animals except his horses!” he said firmly. “He has them in a stables up by the railway line, near a house called Quintinshill.”

_(Readers of a later generation may recognize that name, which some fifteen years later became the scene of the worst ever accident on Great Britain's railways. Also one in which we nearly lost someone close to me)._

“Servants?” Sherlock asked.

“He hates people almost as much as animals”, the policeman said. “All his staff come in and go out every day, and not one of them has a good word to say about him. None of them will be there today because he does not trust them to be there without him; he will just expect them to work twice as hard once he is back late tomorrow.”

“Then I suggest that you see your chief-inspector and tell him that he should find a judge who is prepared to grant a warrant to search Dowson Hall”, Sherlock said. “I need to send off a telegram, then the doctor and I are going to find a body!”

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“I do not see how you got from that message to the Baron killing his eldest son”, I said not at all plaintively as we walked the short distance out of Gretna to Dowson Hall a short time later. “I saw nothing irregular about it.”

“That telegram was sent by an associate of the Baron, someone he knows who lives in the United States”, Sherlock said. “It was our great fortune that because he wished it to sound genuine, the villain did not dictate what he wanted to be said word for word. Hence his friend made two important errors.”

“What were they?” I asked.

“In the first place he referred to buying 'the lot' rather than 'the plot'”, Sherlock said. “That is an Americanism as our erstwhile former subjects' language starts to establish its own quirks and grammatical rules.”

“He could have just been trying to fit in?” I said. Sherlock shook his head.

“Perhaps, but the second mistake was worse”, he said. “He spelt 'plows' the American way, ending with '-w' rather than '-ugh'. Considering that he is supposed to have only just got there I do not believe that Mr. Alan Armstrong would change his spelling or his grammar that quickly. No, I have every reason to believe that he is still on his father's estate. Or at least six feet under it.”

We reached the large iron gate at the entrance to the Hall which Sherlock picked his way through with hardly any effort at all and walked swiftly up the driveway. The building was indeed as small as the constable had said, little more than a town house although the foundations of the larger building of which it had once been a part of were clearly visible. The whole place had a run-down and frankly creepy air about it even in the fading Dumfries-shire daylight.

Sherlock led me round the back of the building which was just as depressing. The river marking the Border ran along the east side of the property and there was a small footbridge across it, which I thought odd as there was almost immediately a hedgerow marking the edge of the farm property on the opposite (English) side. I supposed that one could walk along the edge to resume the road by the property although the river-bank looked rather steep. Perhaps it was a public right of way.

Sherlock looked at the bridge and shook his head.

“A devious opponent”, he said. “Little wonder that he trained in the legal profession before inheriting his title.”

I followed his line of sight across the bridge and could see that the ground had been disturbed on the opposite side. I gulped. The Baron had not actually... had he?

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Although it was still September the following day saw a sharp drop in temperature which for some reason seemed to please Sherlock. I supposed not being at all jealous on my part it was because he himself was such a human furnace and would not feel the cold (although even after all this years his feet still remained ice-blocks!). 

Sherlock fired off another telegram as soon as the post-office was open and then made several inquiries in the town. They seemed rather odd to me but over lunch he told me that Constable Hardwood had taken one Mr. Edmund Carrick, the town odd-job man, in for questioning and the man had admitted that the Baron and his eldest son had had a huge argument over politics on the day before the young man had 'left' and that afterwards he had been asked to do some digging on the estate.

“We shall call on the Baron after lunch once the chief-inspector arrives from Dumfries”, Sherlock said. “Then I have a couple more things to do while we are this side of the Border and we can head for home.”

I perked up at that.

“Does it involve The Kilt?” I asked not at all trembling in anticipation.

“Yes and no.”

I decided that I did not like him after all.

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Baron Dowson received us at his ancestral home with a coldness that exceeded even that of the biting wind blowing in off the distant Irish Sea. He was a stooping grey-haired fellow in his early fifties, and clearly Way Above Everyone Else in society by the way he looked down his nose at us.

“I am busy”, he said loftily. “What do you want?”

“We need to search your grounds I am afraid, sir”, the chief-inspector said. “In pursuit of your son's disappearance.”

“My son is in the United States, sir”, the baron said.

“We have reason to believe that he is not”, the chief-inspector said. “Sir?”

The baron sighed.

“I will of course watch your men while you search”, he said. “First however I will need to see your warrant.”

The chief-inspector handed him an official-looking document which the fellow read carefully before handing it back.

“This does indeed entitle you to search my _Scottish_ estate”, he said. “That appears to be in order.”

Sherlock coughed pointedly. The baron looked down his nose at him.

“Who or what might you be, sir?” he said haughtily.

“Mr. Sherlock Holmes, sir”, my friend replied. “Chief-inspector?”

The policeman nodded.

“You will also need to read this, sir”, he told the baron, handing him a second document. The nobleman looked curiously at it.

“What is this?” he asked.

“A warrant from an English judge in Carlisle, sir”, the chief-inspector said, “granting us permission to search the small enclave of your land on the _English_ side of the river.

I thought that the baron was going to have a seizure right there and then. He swayed precariously, staggered backwards then turned and walked quickly away upstairs.

“Should we go after him?” the chief-inspector asked, looking anxiously at Sherlock.

My friend shook his head and looked at his watch. My finger twitched on the gun that I had ready in my pocket but the baron did not return. A whole minute must have passed, then there was the sound of a single gunshot.....

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The body of poor Mr. Alan Armstrong was duly found buried on the English side of the river. He had been shot four times, once in the arm at close range and three times in the back presumably as he had tried to flee for his life. Without their master's baleful presence hanging over them two of the servants confessed to what had transpired, an argument over the forthcoming election that had ended in bloodshed. The second son Mr. Alexander was implicated in the shooting and had helped to bury the body; he had fled for his life but was captured at Portpatrick waiting for a ferry to Ireland. He was fortunate in that the testimonies of the servants showed his role to be a minor one so he did not hang for his actions, but he would be an old man before he breathed free air again. It all seemed very sad especially when one considered that one single parliamentary seat was not really going to make that much difference to the election result (it did not; the Unionists regained the seat by some five hundred votes). But I suppose that some people feel politics as deeply as others feel religion.

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Sherlock told me that we would be spending an extra day in the area as he wished to take the opportunity to drop in on our friend Mr. Bronn Blackwater who then lived in nearby Wigtownshire. His house was understandably not easy to get to and I was not the least bit envious that he looked physically wrecked by the attentions of his lovers Mr. Dayne and Mr. Lannister, who sniggered quite unnecessarily at having to wake him for our visit. Mr. Blackwater – he was barely four years older than his lovers but he looked much more – thanked us again for all we had done, then dozed off while smiling in Mr. Dayne's arms while Mr. Lannister was showing us around the place. Fortunately the British Army used the area around Newton Stewart to train some of its soldiers in wilderness conditions so Mr. Blackwater – or at least what was left of him – had still been able to carry on his job. When he could walk, that was.

I was still not envious, whatever anyone smirked. _I mean said._

“I do not think that any of us have ever been this happy”, Mr. Lannister sighed as we stood in the garden looking towards the distant mountains. His voice had lost all traces of its American accent and like his friends he too was wearing a kilt, which reminded me......

Which reminded me that it was damnably annoying when _someone_ smirked like that!

“I have half a mind to leave you here!” I grumbled as we headed back to the cottage.

“With Mr. Blackwater and two sexually-overcharged, handsome, well-endowed young men in kilts?” he said far too innocently. “I suppose that I _might_ be able to cope for a time....”

He was in severe danger of never seeing England again! Harrumph!

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Although Miss St. Leger had assured us that the American government was not pursuing either Mr. Lannister or Mr. Dayne any more, what with this being an election year over there as well as over here Sherlock still deemed it wise that the three men move around the country every few years and always to somewhere very remote. There was always the danger that someone back in their native country might notice a spike in Caledonian birth rates and resume the hunt for them. We discussed this – well, most of us discussed this when we got back from our walk; poor Mr. Blackwater managed only a few minutes before he was once again out to the world – and it was decided that they would move again in a couple of years' time, this time to Nairnshire almost at the other end of Scotland and again near a place where the British Army practised.

Naturally it was the chemicals in their bodies that made the two attractive young men who were _not_ twenty years my junior (it was nineteen and a half!) leer at a certain smirking bastard who was not getting laid any time soon. We said our goodbyes and left, us to return to Dumfries-shire and the two young men – seriously we heard Mr. Blackwater groaning even as we drove away! Thankfully we would soon be back in Merrie England and all this would be behind us.

Ah.

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	19. Interlude: The Anvil Chorus

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 1900\. Hankies at the ready – John is about to have the ultimate Moment!

_[Narration by Mr. Sherlock Holmes, Esquire]_

Gretna Green is as my beloved told me the place forever associated with marriage, because of the period lasting about eighty years (1775-1856) when the law against men absconding with unwilling (or sometimes willing) girls was tightened in England and Wales, but then a new fast road to Scotland meant that many could flee there and be married 'over the anvil', a ceremony which under Scots law was as valid as a church marriage in England. John wished to visit the little blacksmith's forge (it was rather attractive and nothing like I had expected) and the snooty lady in charge of it had looked disapprovingly at the two of us while boasting to other visitors in a grating voice about how they were always booked up months in advance. I said nothing but smiled to myself.

We got back to Gretna quite late and I told John that we would catch the sleeper from Carlisle the following evening. He seemed surprised that I was not up for sexy times that night but was prepared to settle for some of that manly embracing that he tolerated because I liked it and would I kindly refrain from calling it That Other Thing That Started With The Third Letter Of The Alphabet And Rhymed With Huddling? He was even cuter when he pouted!

A few hours later he was more than a little surprised to be woken by me fully-dressed in the middle of the night. He looked puzzled at first and only slowly realized that I was wearing The Kilt. There may or may not have been a very small whine from someone who was not a consulting detective.

Make that a large whine. Plus his breathing was notably faster. _Score!_

“Not for that, my love!” I grinned. “At least not yet. We have a short journey to undertake first.”

He yawned but dragged himself up, had a quick wash and went to get dressed; although his breathing increased again when he realized that I had laid out his own kilt. I led him out the back of the hotel and we walked through a silent village to the smithy which, to his evident surprise, had a light on inside. I paused at the gate.

“Do you remember Mr. Vulcan Wild?” I asked.

“The Hammersmith Wonder”, he answered. “Mr. De'Ath's friend.”

“I visited him while I was back in London”, I said, “once I knew that we had a case in this area, and he sent a message to the smith here, a Mr. MacBean. There is a brotherhood amongst that ancient trade and our mighty friend asked a favour. That favour has been granted.”

He gulped, and there were tears in his eyes I nodded.

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In the village of lovers we had our union blessed according to ancient Scots law, There may or may not have been tears. A lot of them.

All right there were. But they were from both of us so that was all right.

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One of the many questions asked by John's readers when he belatedly published the Dowson case and our 'wedding' thereafter was as to why we did not follow tradition further and partake of a honeymoon. In fact I did offer John a week away in Paris but he said that he would much rather just have a week of non-stop sexual gratification back in Baker Street.

Seven days later what was left of my love may just have understood that old saw about being careful what you wish for! I had telegraphed Mrs. Malone from Scotland to say that we would not be needing the maids for a week, and angel that she was she had the room thoroughly cleaned before we reached 221B so I had generously chosen to forgive the smirk she had had as John had fairly sprinted upstairs with me in close pursuit (all right, I admit that I _was_ thinking of that pistol). Then.....

It would need a major story of its own to cover our sexual adventures over the next seven days. Save to say that we got through over a month's supply of aftercare unguent in that time – thank the Lord that we always stocked up well in advance and not just as someone claimed because 'I could be a right 'horn-dog', whatever one of those was. The nineteenth century was coming to an end but we were seeing it out with a bang!

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End file.
